Welcome to Alexandra Park
in North London
Alexandra Park is a delightful mixture of informal
woodland, open grassland, formal gardens and attractions such as the boating
lake, cafés and the pitch-and-putt course. It covers 196 acres around Alexandra Palace in North London.
The Friends of Alexandra Park is a voluntary group that promotes the use of the Park, encourages the conservation of its wildlife and protects the Park from unwanted development.
Calendars!!!!
 Cost? £8.50 as always... Who did the cover photo? Julie Cunningham How many are left? We sold out at Farmers Market so we are re-ordering and should have some available for sale from this evening (Friday). Where can you get one? At the Friends of Ally Pally Station Xmas Party on 14th December 6pm to 8pm At the Ally Pally Parkrun 8:45am to 10am 15th and also 22nd if stocks remain December Park Visitor Centre 16th and also 23rd December if stocks remain 11am to 1pm. Doesn't work for you? Email us and we can arrange a local delivery. (C.O.D.) Friends Upcoming Events
Conservation Work Party Tuesday, 22nd January 10am to 12:30pm  No special skills required; enjoy exercise, plenty of fresh air and good conversation. Please bring secateurs if you have them, but we have extras you can use. We usually work from 10 am to 12.30 pm, but come for as long as you want. Meet at the Butterfly Meadow, if you know it, or at the finger post where the path from North View Road meets the Lower Road, at 10 am. Talk: Everything, but the Ants Wednesday, 23rd January 7:30pm for a 8pm prompt start  While ant hills are the distinctive feature of the meadow, the ants will be left for another talk, but Stephen will show us his marvellous pictures of around 20 butterflies, plus moths, beetles and dragonflies that inhabit this area. He will also illustrate the rather unusual child-rearing practices of a bug! Do join us to see a little of the natural world which lives, often unnoticed, in the park. We will meet up for a drink and a chat from 7:30pm with the talk starting at 8pm promptly. Friends' Recent Events
 With a healthy band of volunteers supported by the last of the mulled wine and mince pies, we set out our stall for selling our calendars and promoting the Friends. We sold 5 calendars in the first half hour and continued at this rate selling out our remaining stock of calendars and more (49) by the end of the day. This is a first for us and we  One small point of dispute among the calendar sellers. Some were upset that being near the Giggly Pig stall made them hungry and others were vegetarian and..... We have re-ordered 50 calendars for delivery by the end of the week - many of which have already been taken. So if you need a copy, please email us ASAP.  Picture left is actually a nuthatch checking out the sparrow box. Then we took a muddy detour into the Railway Field Orchard and admired Jenny's new signage telling visitors precisely what fruit had been planted in the orchard. We saw a few wildflowers out including Dandelion, Daisy and Chickweed as well as Annual Meadow Grass. Looking at a couple of dioecious trees (those that have separate male and female trees) - the yew and the holly we managed to find their red berries.  By the 345 playgroup we saw both flowering Ivy and Fatsia japonica (False Castor Oil plant) and noticed the flowers were very similar - they are in the same plant family. A look at the newly discovered Strawberry trees with their heather-like flowers (left) seemed to encourage the heavens to open.... So after looking at a flowering Hebe, and mentioning her role as cup bearer to the gods before being supplanted by Ganymede, we retired to the PVC for well-deserved mulled wine and mince pies. An enthusiastic social gathering of about 30 of us nearly polished off all the mince pies and left only the dregs of the mulled wine. The Park Visitor had been beautifully decorated by Frances and Jane and was much admired.  Others carried on with bramble removal with a final job being to prune the blackthorn on the edge of the meadow to encourage further growth and give more breeding sites for nesting birds. Birds were not much in evidence apart from a glance of a  Only one wild flower was flowering - knapweed, but we did see several different types of fungi including Bay Bolete (left) and Glistening Inkcap. The Conservation Volunteers
October 2018  We cut back the bramble in a series of (mostly) semi-circular arcs. A wood blewitt fungus was discovered deeply buried under the bramble. Sunshine helped the cause and work behind the barrier proceeded at a good pace. (The fence was resealed after the work.) The next conservation session in the Park will be on Wednesday, 28th November. Meet at 10am. To book or for more information contact Tom Nandi our BAT East Project Officer, email t.nandi@tcv.org.ukor call on Tel: 07917 267 573.
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