The Friends are happy to announce we have been awarded a grant by the TCV Chestnut Fund which we will put to good use in the next few weeks, In our application we said:

The Friends of Mile End Park are on a mission to increase the biodiversity within our park by habitat improvements. We have adopted Chris’ Wood, an area within the park and are on our 4th year of nudging nature along by thinning out brambles, nettles and ground ivy; and planting native woodland bulbs (wild garlic/snowdrops/wood anemones/winter aconites/ etc) and plug plants. We will use the grant to buy extra woodland bulbs (preferably in the green) to boost the woodland floor and plant them on a community day with local children and neighbours for whom the woods are on their doorstep.

Many thanks to the TCV for the award. We were one of only 40 groups from the many hundreds across the country to win through. If you have any woodland favourites you’d like to see more of then please get in touch. We’ll be ordering “in the green” bulbs from Meadowmania so take a look let us know your faves. We’ll put the order in within 2-3 days and finalise planting dates when we can (it has to be soon after they arrive).

Thanks to all the volunteers who came to the monthly litter pick on Sunday (12/03/2023)!

We had quite a few “sick notes” the day before from regulars, but we still had 18 volunteers come along and we achieved lots. Good Gym Tower Hamlets were there in good numbers, but plenty of individuals chipped in too.

We gave Chris’ Wood an extra “deep clean” removing dozens, if not hundreds of, items of litter. It was brilliant to see the yellow winter aconite flowers (which we only planted before Christmas) bursting through the woodland floor. We then picked up the pace and gave the southern half of the park a good de-littering, buoyed on by the sight of hundreds and hundreds of daffs. After reaching the Ragged School we came back up via the Dog Gym and were soon back at our base by the Art Pavilion. The hardest part of the day was ordering the Coffee at International Comrades – lessons were learned in mass-ordering of beverages. Great day. Many, many thanks everyone!