Alex Allardyce, Chair of the Newington Green Action Group and Annette Percy, Chair of the Trustees of Newington Green Unitarians each planted a Crab Apple tree on 22 February '09, as a conclusion to the 2008 anniversary celebrations of:

• the 250^th anniversary of the arrival of Dr Richard Price at Newington Green
• the 350^th anniversary of the building of the terrace he lived in
• the 300^th anniversary of the Church he preached in and 300 years of Dissent on Newington Green.

This was followed by a small reception in the Unitarian Church

The edible Crab Apple trees will also play their part in Newington Green Action Group’s ‘Wildlife in Newington Green’ (WING) project by supporting insect and bird populations and will complement the North side replanting of the Green, which has just commenced.

WING Nestbox Event

Alongside the Tree Planting event, NGAG held a very enjoyable Nestbox Event as part of their WING project.

Park Rangers Chris, Bupesh and Julian helped us, both with the tree planting and with making wooden bird boxes with children, who were obviously enjoying themselves. The children then put a little nesting material into the boxes and took them away to hang up in their gardens, in order to provide shelter for nesting birds along the green wildlife corridors that we are beginning to create.

The children also had great fun filling containers with nesting materials made from an assortment of sheep's wool, hay and moss. Some of these have been hung around Newington Green itself and a good number will be put up all around our green corridors.

Thanks to grants from the Breathing Places Big Lottery Fund and o2, we were able to give away some bird and bee nesting boxes, plus bird feeders, which will be put up in locations around the Newington Green area.

LB Islington provided us with some native tree whips to give out: wild pear, hawthorn, sea buckthorn and blackthorn. All of these trees will provide food and shelter for wildlife and some food for humans - so we might even find people making jam and sloe gin around here again, some time in the future.

We had a raffle, which did well.

• 1st Prize ~ Wooden Bird Table
• 2nd Prize ~ Ladybird Hibernation Box and identification chart
• 3rd Prize ~ Bottle of delicious Bermudan Honey

We had several people joining up as Friends of NGAG, a number of people kindly gave us donations and a good number put their names down as being interested in looking after the new street trees when they're planted.  

NGAG were pleased to be able to donate some nestboxes and nesting materials to Newington Green School and the Mildmay Gardeners' Club, plus tree whips to the Gardeners' Club and to King Henry's Walk Community Garden.