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Kings Park Gardening Groups
Community gardening groups meet weekly in Kings Park to grow food, plant together and get exercise. We're making a green corridor of well natured places on streets and estates - connecting our parks and helping wildlife and people move between them. Contact us to find out how to help.
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Daubeney Gardeners
Daubeney Fields lies at the heart of Kings Park. It provides important habitats for red list birds with falling populations like house sparrows, starlings and mistle thrushes.
Daubeney Gardeners walk around the Daubeney neighbourhood helping each other garden in public places through a project called 10xGreener. We crowdfunded for the UK's first 'postcode gardener' to show us how to make our streets healthy for nature and for ourselves.
Our postcode gardener Kate Poland runs physical activities to help us make over front gardens, plant around pavement trees and seed pavements with wildflowers. More than 100 native plant species, including the rare Jersey Cudweed, now grow on the streets - providing flowers for pollinators and seeds for sparrows and other birds.
10xGreener is supported by local charity ecoActive, park group Daubeney Fields Forever and Friends of the Earth.
Postcode gardener Kate Poland on Trehurst Street
Kingsmead Gardeners
Mabley Green, at the south end of Kings Park, offers a rich mosaic of wildlife habitats. They include wildflower meadow strips, long grass mounds, a disused red gravel pitch and hundreds of trees.
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Kingsmead Gardeners look after an edible garden on the park. We walk to the park on Saturday mornings to grow fruit and nut trees, bushes, herbs and wildflower plants for nature and for local residents.
We also meet on the nearby Kingsmead Estate on Saturdays to tend three community gardens, plant trees and restore grass plots to meadows. We've built a greenhouse and courtyard nursery garden in the Kingsmead community centre. And we run a weekly gardening club at the centre at Wednesday lunchtimes to help local people grow for food and nature.
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Our growing network of community gardens and open spaces stretches from Mabley Green to Daubeney Fields. It helps wildlife and people move between the two parks and provides havens for rare species like the Cinnabar moth and scarce Horehound Longhorn moth.
Planting trees on Mabley Green
Clapton Gardeners
The River Lea and Hackney Marshes run along the east border of Kings Park. Hackney's largest area of natural space is home for hedgehogs and grass snakes as well as owls, kingfishers and other wildlife. The Middlesex Filter Beds nature reserve and Millfields park are found at the north end of the Marshes.
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Clapton Gardeners walk to the marshes, the filter beds and Millfields park on Fridays to improve wildlife habitats and get fit. We plant and mulch trees, create scrubland and hedgerows, clear vegetation, maintain reed beds and meadows and put up bird boxes.
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The Clapton Park estate lies between Millfields and Daubeney Fields. Clapton Park is known as the 'Poppy Estate'. The Grass Roof Company worked with residents there for 15 years to create dozens of mini-allotments, community orchards and herb beds. They installed habitat panels and green roofs and planted shrubs and wildflowers across the estate. These nature-friendly green spaces are now managed by idVerde with our help.
We walk around the estate together, watering street trees, planting beds of pollinator-friendly wildflowers on street verges and growing food in a community garden.
Grass Snake on Hackney Marshes
Moving with Nature
Many people in Kings Park say how they love to walk or cycle and connect with nature in parks and green streets. They get pleasure from noticing wildlife in open spaces. They smile to see trees, smell flowers and hear birds.
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Gardening together is about much more than growing food and making your streets and estates nature friendly. It helps you to walk and exercise more, get to know your neighbours and make friends with people who live near you. It connects you to a community caring for wildlife and each other.
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Wherever you live in Kings Park, there's a gardening together group for you. They offer you opportunities to meet residents who want to get active outdoors and appreciate nature. People like you who want to live in harmony with birds, bees and butterflies and don’t want to see hedgehogs and other animals disappear.
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Daubeney Road plaque. Painting ATM Lettering Julieta Adama