AGM ’25 – a quick review!

Back in May last year, Gerry Tissier of the charity ecoACTIVE, and project manager of the Hackney Buzzline, encouraging wildlife diversity, gave an inspiring talk at the recent CPNAG annual general meeting.

It was agreed for CPNAG –

*To explore linking up with the Buzzline – pinning the pond on the ecoACTIVE Community Map and encouraging people to volunteer and sign up for the newsletter

*To see if local schools like Millfields Community School would like to get involved

*To encourage parklets and planting by residents around street trees.

Gerry spoke about the development of the Hackney Buzzline which stretches for 4km from Hackney Downs to Mabley Green via the Nightingale Estate, Millfields Park, the Clapton Park Estate, Daubney Fields and the Kingsmead Estate.

It is a project which not only encourages wildlife diversity but also fosters community involvement and wellbeing, environmental education, and the active appreciation of nature.

The Buzzline, now in its second year of development, grew out of work around Daubney Fields. Hackney’s Nature Recovery Plan was adopted in 2023 and involves a variety of strategies including making enhancements to parks, using wildlife friendly planting in amenity green spaces and urban greening in new developments.

Central to the Buzzline are park meadows. Most parks in Hackney are made up of mown grass, essential for playing football, sunbathing and so on, but species poor.

It’s therefore been important to reduce mowing, let the grass grow and enhance plant variety with meadows.

Establishing meadows is a four-step process:

*Identify what species we already have

*Establish what they need for foraging

*Plant appropriately

*Monitor

Gerry told us about progress so far on the Buzzline and other projects:

*The Mabley Green to Daubney section is complete.

*A Nightingale Parklet has been supported with planting done by Nightingale School.

*At Millfields, work with the Butterfly Conservancy and Bumble Bee Conservation resulted in a 500sqm meadow with seed provided by the Conservancy. Monitoring showed few butterflies and more hoverflies and small bees.

*The Hackney School of Food Project involved kids catching butterflies and identifying them.

*ecoACTIVE is also working with the Tree Musketeers who are responsible for a lot of tree planting in Hackney.

*ecoACTIVE has also supported a community BuzzLine project in Kampala, Uganda and as a result Kingsmead School is twinned with a school in Kampala.