The Hackney Buzz - Hackney Buzzline News July 2025
This summer, the Hackney Buzzline is in full bloom – and so is the community spirit behind it! From wildflower meadows to bee hotels, nature murals to mosaic trails, we’ve been working with hundreds of residents, schools, volunteers, and local partners to create a continuous corridor of colour, biodiversity, and belonging across Hackney.
In this newsletter, we’re celebrating the incredible energy and creativity that’s transformed housing estates, parks, pavements, and playgrounds into thriving habitats for pollinators – and joyful places for people too. You’ll read about memory gardens built with love, parklets blooming with community pride, schools taking action from Hackney to Kampala, and exciting discoveries of rare bees and butterflies now calling our city home.
It’s been a season of connection, learning, and legacy – and we’re just getting started.
Kingsmead Memory Garden
In May, we completed our pollinator garden on the Kingsmead Estate in memory of June, Carol and Wendy - three much-loved residents known as ‘The Golden Girls’. Disney corporate volunteers helped lay a winding path, made from recycled paving. Relatives, friends, residents and volunteers gathered to celebrate the Golden Girls at an emotional Open Day - along with Hackney Council speaker Sharon Patrick and Cabinet Member Sarah Young.
Clapton Park Estate: Stage 2
Postcode gardener Rachael is now hard at work creating a flower corridor through the Clapton Park Estate. She runs weekly gardening sessions with residents, volunteers and families – planting flower beds, planters, and community gardens along Daubeney Road, Mandeville Street and Millfields Road.
Volunteers have filled the gabion planters on Daubeney Road with Mediterranean herbs like rosemary, oregano, lavender and chives. The plants survived the recent heatwaves, perhaps helped by a little watering from local residents. Drought-tolerant planting is something we’re thinking more about with climate change. Got ideas for resilient planting? Email: [email protected].
We found resin bees nesting in the bee hotels in the Daubeney Road Community Garden. As these bees forage only on yellow flowers, Rachael invited children over from Clapton Park Children’s Centre to plant sunflowers, echinacea, sneezeweed and dyer’s chamomile. She ran family events making butterfly masks from petals and grasses and origami packets of wildflower seeds from the Daubeney Fields meadow. And we’re working with parents to restore a planted bed and paint a nature mural outside the Children’s Centre.
On Mandeville Street, volunteers helped revitalise planters with pollinator-friendly salvias, devil’s-bit scabious, spiked speedwell, and lesser calamint. Our monitoring has shown the flowers have already been visited by at least nine bee and butterfly species.
We’ve also given pollinators a boost by planting salvias in the ‘Pergola ‘community garden on Millfields Road. Finally, at the ‘Costa del Clapton’ corner with Mandeville Street, we’ve built a nesting bank for ground-nesting bees.
Check out our new mosaics opposite Costa del Clapton on the Hackney School of Food wall – part of our growing Buzzline mosaic trail. They feature two local species - a Jersey Tiger moth and Hairy-footed flower bee - chosen by children at a pollinator summer camp we ran last year.
London Nature Films Festival
In May, the Hackney Buzzline featured in two short films at the pop-up London Nature Films Festival.
Big City Butterfly Project interviewed Buzzline ecologist Gerry in the community wildflower meadow strip created along the cycle highway in Millfields Park.
Kenninghall Road Parklet, by Michael Shilling, showcased the planting of a community parklet on the Nightingale Estate. Gerry and Michael then joined a panel discussion with Carolyn Axtell from Possible to share insights on urban greening.
Stoke Newington Parklets
In a special May project, we helped children from St Mary’s and William Patten primary schools fill Stoke Newington street parklets with flowers for bees and butterflies. The project, a collaboration between ecoACTIVE, GrowN22, and Hackney Council’s Streetscene team, has extended the principles of pollinator-friendly planting beyond the Hackney Buzzline.
We The Lea
At the end of May, 80 people walked the Hackney Buzzline for We The Lea - a nature discovery event in the Lea Valley. Volunteers led walkers from Walthamstow Marshes to Cody Dock to hear from wildlife conservation experts, visit exciting habitat creation projects, and meet the people involved. The walk formed part of the London Walking Festival, London Rivers Week, Love Lea Festival, and national Beach of Dreams festival.
Kingsmead School: Green Flag with Distinction
A huge congratulations to Kingsmead Primary School for winning an Ecoschools Green Flag award with Distinction in June. Judges highlighted the school’s involvement with the ‘superb’ Hackney Buzzline project as its greatest success.
Kingsmead is twinned with New Brain primary school on Uganda’s Kampala Buzzline – our sister project. A gift exchange between the schools made the Hackney Gazette front page in May.
On World Bee Day (20 May) we took Year 6 to see the bees at Kew Gardens and join an Instagram Live broadcast with New Brain from the Hive installation.
In July, the two schools met again over video link - connecting children across continents to take environmental action together
Daubeney Fields: Green Flag Award
A Hackney Buzzline butterfly meadow sown by Kingsmead pupils may have helped Daubeney Fields win its first ever Green Flag Award in July. The meadow was blooming with corn marigolds, cornflowers and poppies when the judges came to visit.
ecoACTIVE has worked with the Council Parks Team, Daubeney Fields Forever, and the local community to improve habitats on Daubeney Fields for over 10 years. All four Hackney Buzzline parks now hold Green Flag Awards. Hackney leads the way with 33 Green Flag parks, making it London’s top borough for green spaces.
Pollinator Training for Schools
This summer term, ecoACTIVE piloted a new pollinator training course at Kingsmead, Mandeville, and Nightingale schools on the Hackney Buzzline. Students learned about pollinators in the classroom and went out to survey wildflower meadows in the park. We’re very grateful to the John Lewis Partnership Nature Fund for supporting this hands-on education initiative.
Biodiversity in Action
Pollinator monitoring on the Hackney Buzzline parks is throwing up more exciting discoveries. This year, Gerry has recorded 10 new bee and butterfly species on the parks, including:
The rare Black Mining Bee,
A climate-change newcomer, the European Orchard Bee
A confirmed sighting of the Green Hairstreak butterfly - the first in Hackney.
Evidence of a growing regional population of Marbled White butterflies
Rachael has now also started monitoring bees and butterflies on Clapton Park to see how housing estates can act as ecological corridors. We’re also monitoring pollinators visiting the meadows, gardens, planters, flower beds, bee banks and bee hotels created in the first year of the Hackney Buzzline. Among many other species we’ve seen:
Two leafcutter bee species foraging in the children’s flower bed at Kingsmead school
Willoughby’s leafcutter bees, Red mason bees and Blue mason bees nesting in our bee hotels in the Memory Garden:
Want to help monitor pollinators too? Email: [email protected].
Hackney Buzzline Community Map
We’re thrilled to welcome two new projects to the Hackney Buzzline Community.
Core Landscapes in Homerton is creating a pollinator corridor along Wardle Street with green roofs, tree pits, street planters, a community orchard, and ponds. It has also made a wildlife garden behind St Barnabas Church on Homerton High Street which is bursting with biodiversity and pollinator-friendly planting.
On Daubeney Fields, boater Dmitry has transformed the area outside his mooring into a buzzing community garden, complete with flowers, bee hotels, a small pond, and an educational sign for visitors.
Add your space to the Hackney Buzzline Community Map by sending us a photo and a short description of what you’ve planted.
Kampala Buzzline: Bee Run 2025
Exciting news from Uganda! The world’s first-ever Bee Run takes place in Kampala on Saturday 25 October - a 10k run through a biodiversity-degraded district to raise funds for a plant nursery on the Kampala Buzzline. You can support the global effort to save bees by sponsoring a runner or registering to take part. Let’s create a buzz across borders! 🌍🐝
Get Involved
A huge thank you to the 450+ volunteers, young people, and partners who have helped build the Hackney Buzzline over the last year. Your support is making a real difference. We’re especially grateful to the National Lottery Heritage Fund for making this project possible.
Want to get involved? 💚Weekly planting sessions will resume after the summer holidays. Drop in for as long as you like, learn new skills, meet like-minded people and help make Hackney greener. To join us, join our WhatsApp Hackney Buzzline volunteering group or email Rachael at [email protected].
Together, we’re building a thriving corridor for pollinators — thank you for being part of this movement! 🦋
