Spring explosion!

Last autumn, we got stuck in planting hundreds (yes, HUNDREDS) of daffodil bulbs. It was hard work, but it was completely worth it because they're flowering - and they look spectacular!

So the next time you're passing the meadow, take a seat on one of our new benches and let these bright yellow blooms put a smile on your face.

I hope you like daffodils....

Because the meadow now has hundreds of them! After a great effort from the dedicated meadow volunteers, we added planted three big bags of bulbs in under the grass by the path, so next year we should have hundreds of daffodils to brighten up the spring.

We started by getting used to our shiny new tools, courtesy of our Awards for All grant (thanks Big Lottery!)


Then The Floating Cinema paid us a visit, and everyone got involved with a bit of planting.

Then it was bulbs away for the rest of the afternoon!



A very special thanks to Danny, Chloe and Russell for their hard work and all-round amazingness during the day.

Daffodil day - Saturday 17 September

Autumn is in the air, which means now's the perfect time to fill up the meadow with spring bulbs. So on Saturday 17 September, we'll be holding an all-ages, drop-in bulb planting session from 12pm - 4pm as part of the Hackney Wick Festival.

As always, you can come whenever, and plant as many or as few bulbs as you like. But unlike other bulb-planting days, this year we'll have a bunch of these to help out (thanks Big Lottery Fund!). Which, I'm reliably informed, makes planting super easy and really satisfying.

As a reminder of how AMAZING the bulbs we planted last year looked when they flowered in spring. 2012 will be even better!

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!

Roll on spring

The Hackney Wicked Festival has been really gathering steam over the last few years, and the the 2010 festival was the best one yet. Partly because it was much bigger than before, but also because this year, they kindly gave us a stack of Growing Concerns vouchers to buy a huge pile of spring bulbs.

We got two enormous bags of daffodils and two big boxes of purple crocuses, then headed back to the meadow where lots of lovely local people got stuck in and we got them in the ground. We planted hundreds of them! But we saved some too, which we'll when we sow our next batch of wildflower seeds. That way, we'll have beautiful bulbs in spring then as they die back, our spectacular meadow take over for the summer.