Yes, there are 72 free audio tracks across two new outdoor gardens at the Natural History Museum in South Kensington. The Evolution Garden has 39 tracks. The Nature Discovery Garden (the redeveloped Wildlife Garden) has 33. Each plays for about 60 minutes in order. Everything is hosted on the museum's SoundCloud and on the museum's own website with full transcripts. No booking, no app, no download required if you have signal.
The audio launched on 6 August 2024, a few weeks after the transformed gardens opened to the public in late July 2024. The project sits under the museum's Urban Nature Project, a five-acre redevelopment funded partly by a £3,231,900 National Lottery Heritage Fund grant.
What the audio actually is
Two playlists, one for each garden. They are a mix of three kinds of track:
- Short scene-setting segments narrated by museum staff and scientists.
- Spoken-word poetry. Thirteen pieces across the two gardens, written and performed by five blind and partially blind young adults aged 16 to 20, working with the poet, rapper and writer Testament.
- Described-navigation tracks labelled "Stop Xa" or "Xb" that tell you where to stand, what is in front of you, and how to move to the next point.
The voices you hear are not Sir David Attenborough. He appears briefly as a quote in the Evolution Garden, but the primary narrators are John Tweddle, Head of the Centre for UK Nature Conservation, and Tom McCarter, Head of Gardens, joined by other museum scientists, horticultural experts, youth climate activists and the poetry group.
If you are expecting the polished single-narrator feel of the Hintze Hall audio tour, this is different. It is more layered, slower, and more human. That is the point.
Evolution Garden: 2.7 billion years in about an hour
The Evolution Garden runs along the Exhibition Road side of the museum. It is laid out as a walk through deep time, with rocks, embedded fossils, period-appropriate plants and sculpture keyed to geological eras. You enter near the main gate and walk the timeline before you reach the building.
The 39-track playlist opens with a poem read by The Poetry Group, followed by a welcome from a museum narrator. Stops then move from the formation of the Earth through early life, the rise of reptiles and mammals, and into the present. A recurring star is Fern, the life-sized bronze cast of Dippy the Diplodocus, supported by the Kusuma Trust and built to stand outside year-round. Fern marks Dippy's return to South Kensington after the 2018 to 2020 national tour and has her own stop on the audio guide.
What to listen for:
- The opening poem sets the emotional register for the whole tour. Do not skip it.
- Staff interviews are short and specific. They tell you what a particular rock is, not a general geology lecture.
- The described-navigation tracks ("Stop Xa") are useful even if you are sighted. They stop you from missing small fossils set into the pavement.
Nature Discovery Garden: the old Wildlife Garden, rebuilt
The Nature Discovery Garden is the successor to the original Wildlife Garden, which opened in 1995 and was at one point, in 2016, threatened with removal. It survived, and 27 years of species records were folded into the 2024 rebuild. Recorded so far on site: 34 bee species, 17 digger wasp species, plus beetles, worms, moths, birds and a working pond.
The 33-track playlist covers habitat by habitat: meadow, hedgerow, pond, fruit and nut trees, woodland edge. Pauses are built in for pond-dipping, for lying on the custom benches the museum installed specifically for listening, and for simply sitting with the soundscape.
What to listen for:
- Tom McCarter's woodland segment is the clearest single explanation of why a small urban garden can hold so many species.
- The poetry stops in this garden lean into scent and touch. Several were written after the young authors handled soil samples and fossils in museum workshops.
- A late stop invites you to stop walking and count sounds. It works.
Accessibility: how the guide was built, and for whom
The audio was produced in partnership with VocalEyes, a UK charity that specialises in audio description for blind and partially blind audiences. VocalEyes facilitated workshops at the museum over a week, bringing together five young adults, the poet Testament, and subject experts across soil, rocks, geological time, fossils, evolution and adaptation. Their creative responses became the 13 spoken-word pieces now in the guide.
The museum also ran focus groups with people who have lived experience of navigating museums as blind or partially blind visitors, and worked with a navigation expert to design the described-navigation tracks. The result is a guide that is usable without sight, not a general guide with accessibility bolted on.
In the museum's own words, the guides were "designed with blind and visually impaired audiences in mind" but are offered as a resource for everyone. In practice that means the audio assumes nothing about what you can see, which is a rare and refreshing thing in museum audio.
For more on how the Natural History Museum handles audio description and accessibility across the site, see our [NHM accessibility audio guide overview]nhm audio described tour.
How to listen
There are three ways that all work equally well:
- Open the museum's audio page on your phone in the garden. Each garden has its own page with a SoundCloud player and a full transcript underneath. No app install.
- Use the SoundCloud app directly and search for "NHM London Evolution Garden" or "Nature Discovery Garden".
- Read the transcripts ahead of time if you prefer to walk without headphones.
Bring your own headphones. The museum does not loan them for the gardens. Signal in the gardens is generally fine but the playlists are small enough to preload on the Underground.
Practical notes
- Both gardens are free and open to the public. No ticket required.
- Access is via Exhibition Road and Queen's Gate. You do not need to enter the museum first.
- The gardens are outdoor and seasonal. Spring and summer give you the fullest flora and the most active insect life. Autumn is quieter and arguably better for listening. The museum has not confirmed whether the gardens close in winter; expect daylight hours and occasional weather closures.
- The new Garden Kitchen cafe opened in autumn 2024 and is a good halfway point between the two gardens.
- Allow about two hours if you plan to listen to both playlists with pauses. One garden on its own is a comfortable 75 to 90 minutes.
FAQ
Is the Natural History Museum Wildlife Garden audio guide free?
Yes. All 72 tracks across the Evolution Garden and Nature Discovery Garden are free to stream on SoundCloud or the museum website, with full transcripts.
How long is the audio guide?
About 60 minutes per garden if played in order. Roughly two hours for both with pauses for activities like pond-dipping or sitting on the listening benches.
Does David Attenborough narrate the garden audio?
No. He is quoted briefly in the Evolution Garden but is not the primary voice. The main narrators are museum scientists, horticulturalists, and a group of young poets led by Testament. For the guide Attenborough does narrate, see our [overview of NHM audio guides]does nhm have audio guide.
Is there a described-navigation version for blind visitors?
Yes. The guide was co-designed with VocalEyes and includes dedicated described-navigation tracks at every stop, developed with input from blind and partially blind advisors.
What happened to the old Wildlife Garden?
It was rebuilt and renamed the Nature Discovery Garden in 2024 as part of the Urban Nature Project. Habitats were expanded, paths were redesigned to reduce footfall on sensitive areas, and 27 years of species records from the original garden were carried forward.
Do I need to book to visit the gardens?
No. The gardens are free and open to the public without booking.
If you are planning a wider visit, see our full guide to NHM audio for what exists (and what does not) across the rest of the museum. If you would like a guided experience that actually works as a tour rather than a SoundCloud playlist, Musa builds exactly that for museums and public gardens. Have a look around.