Grosvenor Square

Grosvenor Square reopened on Monday after its eco-makeover. I apologise for the delay in mentioning this. It's quite a change. Previously Grosvenor Square was mostly substandard lawn with some trees around the edge and a handful of US-focused memorials. The memorials are still there but the lawn is now much smaller and surrounded on all sides by a fresh rim of meandering walkways, flowerbeds and shady benches. It's definitely an improvement, indeed somewhere you might now linger, and all because the landowner is looking to the future. The landowner is the Grosvenor Estate, overseer of a longstanding property portfolio with the foresight to have owned Mayfair before all the filthy rich wanted to live there. They can thus easily afford to spend £25m transforming their longstanding property into a "world-leading climate-resilient garden'. If Grosvenor Square is to survive into the 22nd century it needs to be able to cope with rising temperatures, shifting habitats and the threat of urban…