Category: Wansteadium

We reported last week on the scheme to increase bee-friendly plants around Snaresbrook. Here, guerrilla gardener Marian Temple offers some advice on how to get involved by adopting a tree near you.

If you’re tempted to adopt the tree surround outside your house (or anywhere else) to plant it up with wild flowers or anything else, remember, the plants have to be fairly tough for this, this is the process you will need to follow.

Phone the council department for street trees 8708 5325. Register the tree surround (the official name is “tree pit”). Give the address and say that you want to maintain it. It will be put on the register of resident maintained tree pits and will not be sprayed with weed killer. This actually works quite well. But you must do this before April this year because of the council spray regime which is as follows.

The streets are sprayed 4 times a year

1. Feb/March . This is with a residual herbicide. It prevents seed germination in tree pits and lasts 6 months.
2. April/June These later three sprays are all glyphosphate sprays and will kill on contact with leaves.
3. July/August
4. Sept/Nov.

Wanstead is at the end of the spraying time table and this year they will be later than usual, probably not doing the first spray until early April.

If you decide to adopt and plant a tree surround, remember the plants have got to be tough. They will get full sun, full wind and maybe no rain for long periods. They will also get people’s feet and toddler’s bike and buggy wheels over them. Have a look at the tree surround for tell tale wheel and feet marks. That will let you know which are the vulnerable patches. Wild flowers are tough enough for this job.

There is a campaign to plant tree pits in Snaresbrook ward with wild flowers this year. (Meeting at the library on 25 April from 6.15pm onwards – get your wild flower seed there). Also some ornamental grasses, the blue/ green festuca glauca is particularly suitable for this. Lots of other suitable stuff. Stop me and ask me if you see me working in the Corner House garden or on the High Street flower beds and I’ll be happy to give suggestions. All power to your tree pit planting elbows!

Let us know if you do adopt a tree – we’ll celebrate the best efforts here.

While we weren’t looking, London Underground has put new clocks at platform level at Wanstead Tube station. Where once were empty hoops, now there are new (or possibly refurbished) wonderful characteristic roundel clocks.

It was Wansteadium reader John Glombek who first alerted us, but surely someof the thousands who use the station must have been paying attention and will be able to fill the rest of us in on the details?

UPDATE, 12 March
Clocks now synchronised. Obsessives may relax.

Geoff Wilkinson, supporting the BeE11 cause on Wanstead Daily Photo, writes: “Good news for bees in Wanstead, Friends of the Earth plan to distribute wild flower seeds around Snaresbrook to ‘plant corridors of pollen bearing flowers’. I found this little chap in my front garden the other day resting on the edging.”
More on the campaign on Monday.

Genius work from Marcus Tyler who went out with his camera to recreate the photo. As for location, that must be QED.

A head of steam also brewing for restaging the race to coincide with the Wanstead Fringe. Organiser/co-ordinator now sought. Contact wansteadium@gmail.com.

Also use that address if you have old photos of Wanstead you’d share here. This has been fun.

Wansteadium happened across this photograph from 1930 taken somewhere in Wanstead. It shows the start of a Wanstead-to-Southend roller skate race. Not completely clear exactly where it’s taken though… Any takers?

Sample of the JJ Adams exhibition unveiled at Images in Frames in Wanstead. Photo by the artist.