Kensington Roof Gardens
Kensington Roof Gardens (formerly known as Derry and Toms Roof Gardens and later The Roof Gardens) is a private roof garden covering on top of the former Derry & Toms building on Kensington High Street in central London. Originally opened in 1938, the gardens were open to the public until January 2018 when the leaseholder, Virgin Limited Edition, was unable to reach an agreement with the freeholder about renewal of the lease. History. Derry and Toms new Art Deco department store was opened in 1933. The gardens were laid out between 1936 and 1938 by Ralph Hancock, a  landscape architect who had just created the "Gardens of the Nations" on the 11th floor of the RCA Building in New York, on the instructions of Trevor Bowen (then vice-president of Barkers, the department store giant that owned the site and constructed the building). They cost £25,000 to create and visitors were charged 1 shilling to enter. Money raised was donated to local hospitals and £120,000 was raised during the next 30 years. The building housed the department store Derry and Toms until 1973, and then Biba until 1975. In 1978, the garden's Art Deco tea  pavilion was redeveloped into a nightclub, in 1981 Virgin Limited Edition bought the lease to the roof garden and the pavilion, and in 2001 Virgin turned the pavilion into the Babylon restaurant. The more than 100 trees in the garden were given a tree preservation order by Kensington & Chelsea council in 1976, the roof garden buildings were Grade II* listed by English Heritage in 1981 as part of a listing given the whole building, and the garden itself was given a Grade II listing in 1998 within the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. Virgin ceased its operation of the  Roof Gardens in January 2018 and the site is currently closed to the public. It is unknown when it will reopen. The gardens. It is divided into three themed gardens: