New Bike Racks

Bike Racks Installed to Protect one of our WING Trees

This native tree on Green Lanes, was planted by NGAG as part of our Wildlife in Newington Green, WING project in 2009. You might ask 'Why did it need protecting?'

Well, this tree has really suffered as it was planted outside a busy supermarket and people just kept damaging it. The tree has been knocked over by delivery vans on several occasions, so that it needed to be completely replanted twice, the second time it was actually moved slightly. Our patient LBI Urban Forester Patrick Richardson kept thinking of new ways to look after it. I believe the tree has had three types of tree guard put around it but even so, it has still had branches broken off - and it has been used constantly as a bike rack!

NGAG volunteers planted up the tree pit, along with others around Newington Green. Cyclists began to be more careful and avoided chaining their bikes up to the tree for a while, so the planting did help a bit.

In order to protect the tree and to encourage more cycle-use (and therefore the environment) we wanted to give cyclists a more suitable and secure place to lock up their bikes, so we requested some bike racks to be put on the pavement outside the supermarket. This request was not as simple as it seems, for although that pavement is in Islington, it is actually looked after by LB Hackney, so we had to go around several departments in both Boroughs, before we found out who to ask. Once we could put in our request, we also asked for racks to go outside the Monarch Pub on Green Lanes N16.

The bike racks were finally installed in July 2010.