Newington Green In Bloom

The Newington Green Action Group are entering Newington Green for the RHS London In Bloom Neighbourhood Award 2009.

With the funding that we have obtained from the Big Lottery Fund's Breathing Places Grant, the Forestry Commission's Community Grant and o2's It's Your Community Award, NGAG has planted 30 street trees which are mainly native varieties have been chosen to support wildlife in the Newington Green area, as part of NGAG's WING project. We would like to thank the hard working Hackney and Islington Tree Officers for all their help and expertise, which made this tree planting possible.

Newington Green itself is dominated by the beautiful old plane trees that are approximately 140 years old. Eight of the new trees have been planted on the pavements around Newington Green itself and the other 22 are in side roads linking to the Green. We are pleased to say that a number of residents and traders have already volunteered to be Tree Carers and to keep the trees watered and looked after. If you would like to become a Tree Carer for a tree near you, do contact us.

Criminal Tree Damage

Unfortunately there has already been some damage to our new trees, where people have parked vehicles up close to trees and broken off some branches. One new tree has even had a branch deliberately ripped off! This is sad and frustrating after all the hard work and fundraising that has taken place over the last eighteen months, in order to get these trees planted. Damage to trees is also a criminal offence, so please take care when parking and stop your children from ripping the branches and bark off any tree, as this actually kills the trees. A number of mature trees in Petherton Road have been so badly damaged that they are likely to die - we want to avoid this happening to our new trees.

Newington Green in Bloom

The North end of the Green has now been re-planted by LB Islington and there are a good number of new plants on the Green with some sustainable planting including ornamental grasses, foxgloves, hellebores, acers and hazels, many of which will also help biodiversity on the Green. These new plants and the previous planting on the South end of the Green which includes some lovely magnolias, add some welcome colour and variety to the Green, particularly in the Spring. We also have some new bark-covered pathways that lead through the shrubberies, which will be fun for children to explore.

As part of Islington's 'Go Wild in the Streets' Campaign, volunteers have put wildflower seeds beneath street trees around Newington Green, plus a number of trees in the side roads. The wildflowers will help our struggling bees and other insects to survive, by providing nectar and pollen for them to live on.

Residents in Winston Road have had fun putting edging around new tree pits, which they have planted up and even decorated some with sea shells and stones.

Join In!

We would very much like to encourage local residents and traders to get involved with the Newington Green in Bloom campaign and to help make the area beautiful with lots of flowers this summer. All these will contribute to making the Newington Green area sing with colour and contirbute to the WING project's green wildlife corridors:

• Front gardens,
• Window sills,
• Balconies,
• Hanging baskets,
• Windows boxes
• Planters 

When you choose plants, do try to include native wildflowers, or single flowers that have pollen and nectar and are therefore good for bees, butterflies and other benign insects and therefore help biodiversity. Many cultivated plants have actuallly become sterile when they have been developed by horticulturalists but if you choose plants that already have insects visiting them in the garden centre, you will know which varieties are good for wildlife. If you can, do use peat free compost so that you can protect our rapidly shrinking peatlands which absorb huge amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere.

If you would like more information about native plant species that are local to this area, visit the wonderful Postcode Plant Database, which is managed by the Natural History Museum, or Plant Press, which has been created by Natural England:

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/fff/intro.html

http://www.plantpress.com/wildlife/home.php