Jess Massucco, Community Engagement Manager at Trees for Cities writes: Trees for Cities (TfC) worked in partnership with the Council to plant new trees, plants and bulbs at Furze Green with the local community. The planting took place through school planting workshops, followed by a community planting day on Saturday 23 October. The community planting day was part of The Queen’s Green Canopy, a unique tree planting initiative created to mark Her Majesty’s Platinum Jubilee in 2022, which invites people from across the United Kingdom to “Plant a Tree for the Jubilee”. Consultation TfC spent one day at the park…
Author: John Archer
Parks and green spaces in Tower Hamlets have had a very successful year in both the Green Flag and London in Bloom awards. The Green Flag Awards scheme, managed by environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy under licence from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities, recognises and rewards well-managed parks and green spaces, setting the benchmark standard for the management of recreational outdoor spaces across the United Kingdom and around the world. The scheme celebrates 25 years as the international quality mark for parks in 2021. All twelve Council parks with Green Flags retained their awards for another year.…
The Council’s Parks Service commissioned Lubbe Bulbs to plant thousands of bulbs of a special Biodiversity mix in Meath Gardens (photo above) and Poplar Recreation Ground (photo below). The mix includes crocuses, small daffodils, small tulips, grape hyacinths and glory-of-the-snow, to provide a source of nectar for bees and other pollinators from early February through to the end of May. The bulbs were planted by machine, which buries them deeper than hand planting. This helps to protect species such as tulips and crocuses, which would otherwise be eaten by squirrels. The bulbs were planted in early October. Look out for…
Artist and moth advocate Katherine Pogson writes: As part of an art-research exhibition in Bethnal Green, I was invited by Phytology to run a community moth trapping evening at Bethnal Green Nature Reserve. This took place on 21 August. The evening went very well in terms of audience participation, we had twelve people including three children; a mixture of local people, people with environmental backgrounds, and some new to London and/or the area which was pleasing. One family drove in from Suffolk especially for the event. The trapping itself was rather challenging, due to the equipment being chewed by the…
Amazingly, local naturalist and photographer Gino Brignoli has found three nationally Endangered insects in Tower Hamlets this month. In addition to the flat-footed fly Agathomyia collini at Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park previously reported, Gino has found another rare fly at Bethnal Green Nature Reserve, and a spectacular beetle at a location that’s being kept confidential. Gino writes: I was beyond excited to find the Eyed Longhorn Beetle (Oberea oculata) (left – click on photo to enlarge) at a site in Tower Hamlets on 17 July. Because this is such a rare and beautiful beetle, I have been advised by Wil Heeney,…
On 18 July, local naturalist and photographer Gino Brignoli photographed a flat-footed fly along a path in Sanctuary Wood, in Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park. It was confirmed by expert Peter Chandler as the nationally rare Agathomyia collini. The species was classified as Endangered in a review published by Natural England in 2018. Previously known from about a dozen sites across southern England, there have only been two 21st Century records, one from a Lewisham garden and one in Suffolk. Gino returned to Cemetery Park on 21 July and found a further three Agathomyia collini, suggesting that there is an established…
The Big Butterfly Count is a nationwide survey aimed at helping assess the health of our environment, and the largest butterfly survey in the world. It was launched in 2010 and an impressive 10,000 people took part, counting 210,000 butterflies and day-flying moths across the nation. Over 111,500 people took part in 2020, counting over 1.4 million individual butterflies and day-flying moths across the UK (see the 2020 results). This year’s Big Butterfly Count is taking place from Friday 16 July to Sunday 8 August 2020. The survey is run by the charity Butterfly Conservation. To take part, simply count…
Michelle Lindson of the Friends of Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park writes: Just a quick update on how the wildflower meadow is doing at Stepney City Farm. This is the meadow we created with the help of a Tower Habitats grant at the beginning of 2020. As these photos show, it’s looking lovely! There are so many bees and other pollinators visiting the flowers. All photos by Michelle Lindson (click to enlarge)
The bulbs planted in Weavers Fields by the Council’s Parks Service last autumn (see this post) are now a blaze of colour and plenty of nectar for local bees. These daffodils, tulips and Scilla are actually the second wave of flowers, following the crocuses which flowered much earlier in the spring and are now over. Photos by Monhammed Raja
Elaine Delay of Walk on the Wild Side of Matilda writes: Walk on the Wild Side of Matilda is made up of a growing group of residents. We are children and adults who are interested in and want to protect the wild side of Matilda House. We have a beautiful, mature, over 80-years-old garden that surrounds our building and with that comes the perfect habitats for many kinds of beautiful birds, bats, bees, flowers and insects. We think we are very lucky to live surrounded by such a wealth of nature. Last year, with the support of the Council’s Biodiversity…