In 2009, there was a big master planning study done on the Greenway and there were a lot of improvements that were listed and interventions that would make the Greenway more accessible, safer, and better used for cycling, etc.
A lot of those projects have been picked up since by our highways service who have been improving the lighting and introduced segregated cycling and pedestrian routes, CCTV and also accessible ramps at different entry points along the route.
Those works are still ongoing, I think they’re in the final stretch now right at the Beckton end of the Greenway. But one of the projects that was listed all that time ago was a rewilding project that looked at the grass verges and made suggestions of how the biodiversity could be improved, to benefit wildlife, but also would benefit and create a more attractive walking route across the borough.
Those recommendations sat there for a while and then an opportunity came up through the GLA’s rewild London fund for us to apply for funds for a project. And the Greenway presented itself as as a really good opportunity to make a real difference and create a very impactful pollinator trail, essentially, the positioning of the Greenway, from beyond Stratford all the way down to Beckton cutting through so many wards, the whole borough essentially as a green corridor, it is very well positioned as a pollinating corridor, you can imagine how over years to come that branches will then form and that the areas around the Greenway will become pollinated in turn and really impact on nature recovery.
So we put an application in and were successful, we were awarded the money and then added some match funding through our own service.
So then in 2022, we were awarded the grant and we worked very closely with specialist ecologists and also had support from Bumblebee Conservation Trust and Big City Butterflies that’s run by Butterfly Conservation and also worked with volunteers across the community to understand what was there, what what we had already and then to understand the best seed mix and the best methods for for seeding the the stretch.
It’s over six kilometers of wildflower now and we had our grounds team working alongside volunteers to rotate seed and we’re now maintaining and managing that whole northerly strip as wildflower verges.
We also then introduced information points and some nature stop offs, plants that caterpillars eat and the nesting areas for the wild bees and other habitats. Essentially, along the verges that Thames Water is responsible for.
There are four stops off areas along the route, that includes a wild bee garden at the back of the hospital, which is really successful and a larger space that is used by the hospital for well-being activities, walks, etc.
This is a lovely example of sort of how to create spaces to support wild bees. We also ran some planting workshops, some bee explorer walks, butterfly walks, we trained some of our staff through specialist workshops and wildflower identification projects and things like that.
It was a real collaborative project team effort; we have to work very closely with Thames Water as well because they have to excavate the greenway at times so that is going to impact on the pollinator trial. We’ve been a part of their user group meetings, and we meet regularly with Thames Water to ensure that when they are carrying out their works there’s a clear plan for saving the seed bank through keeping the turf or for reseeding afterwards with the appropriate seed mix so that we don’t lose any sections.
You mentioned the orchard previously and we’ve been talking to the orchard, I’ve had a few conversations with them about the section in between the orchard and the wild bee garden.
There’s quite a long stretch that runs behind the hospital and the wild bee garden is at one end and the orchard is at the other and in between is quite overgrown now with a lot of shrubs and trees, but I think that used to be a bit more of an accessible trail there.
I think that that’s the next part that we’d like to make more accessible again and to create a bit of a nature trail that joins those two spaces. So that would be the next step but really, in the end we’re focusing on ensuring the wildflowers are established for a second year, getting those mowing regimes right and making sure that we’re managing the meadows and those garden spaces, the planted areas and ensuring those plants are established so there’s quite a lot of kind of monitoring going on at the moment. I think once we’re happy that we’ve got everything right there then we can look to the next steps.
