The initiative seems to have got off to a flying start with people flocking to sign up on the website and start doing creative things with their gardens and open spaces.
One initiative launched a few years ago involving Friends of the Earth and Redbridge Council saw seeds provided for planting around the bowls of trees in the roads around Snaresbrook.
I was part of that initiative, helping to co-ordinate distribution as well as planting a lot of tree bowls in my own road. Others in the road helped out.
The results were pretty spectacular with the wild flowers really creating a striking vista. We still have the remnants of that work but it would be great to renew the plantings as well as spreading the work out to many more streets across Wanstead.
The initiative is a bit like the excellent guerilla gardening initiatives that Marion Temple has so successively pursued around Wanstead.
Wild Wanstead is about making our own spaces more accessible to wildlife, whether that involves planting a tree, having a pond or a log pile.
We should also think more about opening up more of our gardens and drives to nature. Too much of Wanstead has been covered in concrete. This is not conducive to wildlife, so it would be great to see some of that concrete coming up and being replaced with wild life inducing developments.
The Wild Wanstead initiative seeks to increase the green lung capacity of Wanstead. It is vital to the environment in which we all live. It is also important for all of us – old and young – to have that connection with the earth. The feeling of contact with the earth is spiritually, mentally and physically important for all of our well beings. Long may Wild Wanstead prosper.
For more info see: wildwanstead.org
published - Wanstead and Woodford Guardian and Wanstead and Woodford + Ilford Recorder - 29/3/2018
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