Another win for the meadow!

Hot on the heels of the London in Bloom post comes another great success for the meadow - we won TFL's Life Between the Lines competition!

To help celebrate the 2010 International Year of Biodiversity, TFL set up the project with the RSPB to promote biodiverse spaces within a five minute walk of a London tube station *ahem, or Overground station, ahem*.

Our spectacular meadow (with it's healthy population of bumblebees) ticked all of their boxes, so they awarded us first place!

Better still, there are prizes to go with the award. Specific details about what those will be are on the way, but the main one is a one-day masterclass with an RSPB biodiversity expert. Which is a fantastic thing to win.

RSPB usually charge £100 a head for these courses, and Sue from Friends of Homerton Station can testify that they're amazing - and incredibly helpful. So if you'd like to come along to our free one, just leave a comment or email mableymeadow@gmail.com. More info will be posted on here soon...

We are the champions!

When London In Bloom came to Hackney this year, they absolutely loved it!

In fact, the judges were so impressed that they awarded the meadow third place in the Community Garden category. London in Bloom is a pretty tough competition, and we were up against 24 other incredible green spaces, so to get third place (especially in our first year) is a tremendous achievement. Congratulations Mabley Green-ites! We earned it!

Also, if you'd like to do a bit of exploring around our great city, check out the inspiring spaces that scooped first and second place - they're amazing!

ps - for everyone who gets the meadow emails, this is old news. I only just got the certificate, so wanted to hold off until I could take a pic of it. Sadly, as far as certificates go, it's a big crap.
pps - I only just realised the irony of holding a London in Bloom certificate in front of an autumnal meadow. Oops! So try to imagine a blooming meadow in the background instead. Or better still, photoshop one in, email it to me, and I'll replace the pic.

Mabley Green's bulb-planting machines

Our volunteering day on Saturday was AMAZING, thanks to the incredible efforts of everyone who came down. Aside from the epic weeding session at the start of the day, the really big achievement was our incredible bulb-planting marathon.

In total, we planted an astonishing 1600 bulbs across the meadow (details of what we planted, and where, will be on here soon). We planted lots of different varieties, so they earliest bloomers should start to show up in February. Then the flowery baton will be picked up by the next set of bulbs, until the meadow flowers take over in June. So if we get lucky with the weather, we'll have blooms all the way from February to October!

Volunteering day - Saturday November 6

Now the meadow has finished blooming and seeding for the year, it's time to whip it back into shape and prepare the ground for an even bigger and better display next summer!

So, come to the meadow from 11am-4pm on Saturday November 6 and get stuck in. On the day, we'll be:

- Sowing a new batch of wildflower seeds
- Planting daffodil, bluebell and crocus bulbs
- Creating a beetle loggery using waste logs from the London 2012 site
- Putting our protective fences back up
- Having a chat and giving each other pats on the back for doing a good deed.

Feel free to stay as long or as short as you like, and do as much or as little as you please. Just make sure you wear sturdy shoes, and if you have them, bring along a garden fork or spade and a pair of work gloves.

If you've not been to the meadow before, we'll be meeting on Lee Conservancy Rd (E9) - just past the underpass, near the corner of Eastway. Or, to keep things simple, where the red X is on the map.

See you then!