Sunday 30 September 2012, from 3pm until 10pm
Celebrate wildflowers and urban meadows at the Garden this weekend and help the River of Flowers launch a new “East London River of Flowers”. The new ‘River’ will wind along from Hackney to Tower Hamlets, starting with the meadow being created at the Dalston Eastern Curve Garden, via the meadows of Homerton Station and Mile End Park and ending at Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park. East Londoners, bees and other insect pollinators will all benefit from the wildflower plantings.
Sunday’s ‘Urban Meadows Festival’ will start at 3pm, when children and parents can join in sowing wildflower seedballs donated by SEED:Ball and Urban Meadow Kits from River of Flowers, before enjoying a “meadow full of magical folktales from around the world” with Sonia Caller, local story-teller.
Then from 5-7pm there will be a series of talks in the Garden’s Pineapple House, introduced by Kathryn Lwin, founder of River of Flowers. Anna Evely, founder of project MAYA, and the newly founded SEED:Ball will discuss ‘Urban meadows: connecting the city to the country’. Dalston Resident Russell Miller of the Tree Musketeers, will talk about Trees in Cities. Sue Phillips, founder and Chair of ‘Friends of Homerton Station’, will tell the story of London’s first wildflower station, before journalist Alison Benjamin, co-founder of ‘Urban Bees’ and co-author of: ‘Keeping Bees and Making Honey’, ‘A World Without Bees’, and ‘Bees in the City”, brings the talks to an end.
A Wild Art exhibition will be on show for the day, featuring works by Tracey Bush, Kathryn Corlett, Sharon Dewhirst, Lisa Marie Grigsby and Sophie Housley
The Festival will end with live music from 7-10pm with Nicolette, Greg Hall, Light Falls Forward and Sea Stacks.
This event is free but donations welcome, all contributions raised will go towards creating more urban meadows.
