The Park Visitor Centre (i) is between the Grove car park and the cafe in the Grove. Open Sundays and first Saturday of each month from 2pm till 4pm. Maps, leaflets, quizzes and drawing materials for children.
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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.
Become a Friend here - buy our book "A History Of Alexandra Park" in our shop
Our activities include:
Organising walks and talks about trees, bats, fungi, moths, insects, birds and the history of Alexandra Park, and conservation work.
Sending a newsletter every month to all our members.
Opening the Park Visitor Centre
Members' Nature Walk
Sunday 12th October from 11:00am to Noon
Location and subject still to be decided. Details will be email to members.
Not yet a member? Join for just £5/year here.
Autumn Tree Walk
Saturday 18th October from 11:00am to 12:30pm
Autumn Tree walk details to be published soon.......
Art in the Park
Thursday 23rd October from 10:00am to 11:30am
Monthly free art sessions led by Katy Fattuhi.
For more information and to find out the meeting place, email AllyParkN10@gmail.com.
Conservation Work in the Park
Tuesday 28th October from 10:00am to 12:30pm
We will working in the Grove this month.
Bring gardening gloves if you have them, although we have spares to lend. No special skills needed and refreshments provided.
Meet at the Park Visitor Centre email AllyParkN10@gmail.com for details.
RECENT EVENTS IN THE PARK
Conservation Work in the Anthill Meadow: 23rd September
On a very pleasant sunny, but cool, September morning, ten of us, shears in hand, cut the grassy sward in the central area of the anthill meadow. Revealing the many yellow field ant mounds (picture) there, and giving them a chance to grow their own community of plants.
We will seed that area with yellow rattle, in November, to control the grasses, thus allowing more flowering plants to grow, and more butterflies and insects to thrive. This summer has seen a good butterfly count in the park, partly due to our efforts in the anthill meadow. Thanks to David of John O’Conner for the lift back to the PVC.
Conservation Work in the Grove: 21st August
Since the laid hedge in the Spinney had become very overgrown and scruffy looking, eight of us worked in pairs on either side of the hedge, weaving and tying in new growth and trimming those flyaway bits – a bit like a haircut!
It was a lovely morning to be working outdoors, with a surprising amount of birdsong: nuthatch, particularly, members of the tit family, and a woodpecker. A rather worn speckled wood butterfly floated by. We had admiring comments and encouragement from passers-by, which was a bonus. It was a lovely day to be out. Rubén came and had a chat with us. Everyone’s sorry to see him go.
Swingbusters in the Grove: 17th August
On a beautiful sunny day, The Swing Busters trio drew the largest crowd we have had for Music in the Grove – 150, including children.
Most of the audience weren’t born when many of the tunes were first performed, but there is a familiarity and nostalgia that gives the music its appeal. And although we couldn’t compete with Tony Engle’s delivery of all the lyrics, we could at least join in with the chorus: “Everything stops for tea”. Tony alternated between various saxes, and with Steve Benaim’s steady rhythm guitar and vocals and Martin Appleby’s bass, the trio provided the audience with a marvellous afternoon.
Family Bug Hunt: 17th August
A lovely sunny day to look for bugs.
A lot of flower crab spiders found as well as other small spiders and red spider mites. Several different species of ladybirds - harlequin, 7 spot, 16 spot and 24 spot were captured before being released. Some black coloured aphids and a green veined white butterfly were also seen.
Pictured left is a 16 spot ladybird.
Members' Nature Walk: 16th August
A possible look at butterflies and other insects was abandoned due to the overcast conditions.
Instead we looked several trees and a striking Shaggy Bracket fungus on the weeping ash tree, but above all we searched for galls.
We found galls caused mites and sawflies as well as plenty caused by wasps including the three seen on the picture to the left. In order of prevalence, silk button, common spangle and smooth spangle galls.
Family Art in the Park: 10th August
Katy worked with a small group of families to help them make their own clay fossils in a quiet summery corner of the Spinney. Children and grown-ups used textures from nature to imprint into clay, then painted them to look like fossils while talking about how it is all down to fossils that we know about ancient plants and animals.
London Metropolitan Brass Senior Band: 3rd August
Despite rain foreshortening their programme, the band entertained a hardy audience with tunes ranging from Holst’s “Fantasia on the Dargason” to “Wand’rin’ Star” – that not easily forgotten number “sung” by Lee Marvin in the film Paint Your Wagon.
Fortunately the band’s rendering was much more tuneful. In the interval the latest group of LMB beginners gave their first public performance, and a creditable job they made of it. LMB do a tremendous job of loaning instruments and teaching beginners, which brings new blood into the brass band community. More pictures here.
Butterfly Walk: 26th July
It was threatening rain, overcast and warm as we set off. In the Conservation Pond area we saw some whites, probably small whites, but they weren’t landing. We saw gatekeepers, a meadow brown, a few common blues (pictured left) and a speckled wood, plus a straw dot moth along with a hornet mimic hoverfly on the creeping thistle. We noted how early the blackberries are, leaving less blossom for the insects.
It started to rain as we made our way across to the Anthill Meadow and the main meadows. By this time many butterflies had taken shelter, though we saw a few common blues, gatekeepers and meadow browns. A grasshopper, a yellow crab spider and another hornet mimic hoverfly were also spotted.
Conservation Work in the Park: 22nd July
Fifteen of us converged on the Anthill Meadow to continue the battle against brambles. In no way do we want to annihilate them, as they provide food and cover for insects and birds, but we do want to give other plants room to thrive so as to improve the biodiversity of the meadow.
It was rewarding to see seven species of butterfly, including a newly hatched small copper (pictured, © Tony Jakeman) and a rather shabby marble white, along with a Jersey tiger moth and an emperor dragonfly. Marvellous rewards for the work we do.
We also found and released a young wild service tree from the grasp of brambles and hawthorn. Thank you to the lovely Friends who join us on the work parties.
Bat Walk: 21st July
The first summer bat watch that we have organised proved a great success: 26 people booked and turned up, the night was warm and the bats were very active. The children in the group could barely contain their excitement at seeing close up the twists and turns of the bats hunting insects over the water.
Art in the Park: 17th July
With half of the park boarded up for the Summer Season, it was a bit more of a challenge to find a meeting spot and for those on the ‘wrong’ side of the park to reach it. However, it was lovely to meet up with nine of the group despite the challenges.
We settled in along the path beneath the pitch & putt, which made for some rather bucolic vistas that our sketchers enjoyed the challenge of conveying on paper. It was an especially quiet and peaceful session, and one member of the party even had a speckled wood visit her box of drawing pencils several times.
Family Art in the Park: 13th July
We beat the sun by tucking ourselves away in the shade of the Railway Orchard (behind the Grove Café) and had a summery creative blast together. About 15 children (aged 1–12) and their parents/grandparents joined us for a relaxed and playful session.
Activities included nature potion making and ice painting as fun sensory activities for smaller hands. Others used recycled materials to create mini pop-up and paper-woven gardens (pictured), and wool woven flowers. And as always there were interesting drawing and painting opportunities to dip into too.
Some feedback from the session:
"Such a fun family experience for all ages! The kids absolutely loved making art with nature and the textiles and sensory aspects were very calming (for both kids and grown ups!)"
"My grandson was very proud of his pieces of art and came home and told everyone about it!"
"We very much enjoyed it. It is so lovely to do these activities in the park."
Summer Wildflower Walk: 6th July
The morning of the walk was very confusing: rain on, rain off… Those who bravely came to the meeting spot were rewarded with sunshine and a good selection of flowers – as so often, in the most unpromising of places: a ditch along the Lower Road. We were able to compare both types of plantain (greater and ribwort), two types of bindweed (field bindweed, with its smaller pink-striped flowers; and large bindweed, with its larger white flowers), and two types of thistle (creeping thistle, with its mauve, honey-scented flowers and bare stems; and spear thistle, with its purple flowers and painfully sharp, pointed leaves).
In the Anthill Meadow we enjoyed a number of butterflies and moths fluttering over the knapweed, ragwort and bird’s-foot trefoil (pictured).
Palace Band: 6th July
The Palace Wind Band were particularly keen to play in the Grove this year, having had to cancel last year because of bad weather. They set up in sunshine but were forced to retreat under the trees because of a rain shower.
The audience did the same and enjoyed a varied programme that included some very familiar tunes from the operatic repertoire.
London Metropolitan Brass Senior Band: 29th June
A first visit of the year for the Senior Band with the Monday Band playing in the "break". Lots of classics and brilliant weather for the crowd and band alike.
A marvellous way to spend a Sunday afternoon.
History Walk: 25th June
A small and very interested group enjoyed a warm summer evening walk round the park, interspersed with accounts from Gordon of the many and varied events that have taken place there.
The size of the first building in the park, the Banqueting Hall (aka Blandford Hall) surprised some; the current location of the Crouch End Vipers (a football team that played a season in the Upper Field in the 1930s) was debated, and a none-too-flattering 1874 description of the average racegoer was thought to ring true today! In view of the heat, the walk was shortened, leaving the Grove for another day.
London Metropolitan Brass Community Band: 15th June
The band started the Music in the Grove season with their usual entertaining programme starting with the Proclaimers’ ‘500 Miles’ and ending with the perennial favourite, ‘Baggy Trousers’, by Madness. In between there were familiar tunes from films and musicals, and a distinctly less familiar number: ‘Bass in the Ballroom’, a solo for the large and deep-sounding tuba.
London Metropolitan Brass do a great job of teaching brass to novices and returnees, and this year’s cohort, who had only started learning in January, did themselves proud in the interval at their first public performance. (Gordon, the organiser of Music in the Grove, is pictured thanking the band.)
Family Art in the Park in the PVC: 15th June
We trialled our first drop-in session during a visitor centre Sunday opening. Katy was on hand with a variety of flower-themed creative activities for families who dropped in while enjoying a sunny afternoon in the park. There was lots of colouring and collaging of summery garden scenes and making of flowers with tissue paper and weaving. Look out for future dates and do swing by if you are in the park with children or grandchildren.
Members' Nature Walk: 11th June
About ten of us met up on a barmy evening near the stegosaurus. We had had a report of an egret on the reservoir and wandered over. Unfortunately nothing was to be seen....
We walked around the cricket pitch and looked at the different willows some of which had some willow red bean galls on the leaves (picture). There was also some charlock flowering. Further round we saw hemlock (, but didn't taste it), some creeping thistle and goat's rue - all in bloom.
We walked across the racecourse and admired some more trees on the southern edge of the park (whitebeam and oaks) before finishing by an impromptu swing which two of the walk participants happily tried out.
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