Our 2025 wall calendar can now be ordered. £9.50 including free LOCAL delivery.
It features 13 photographs of the park, taken throughout the year by local photographers.
Visit our SHOP
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 normal 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, where you can find leaflets, chat to volunteers and find activities for children.
Seasonal Walk and Friends Social
Saturday 7th December from 2pm to 4pm
A short walk followed by mulled wine and mince pies.
Details will be emailed out to members.
Not yet a member. Join here!
Friends stall at the Ally Pally Farmers' Market
Sunday 8th December from 10am to 3pm
Friends stall at the Ally Pally Farmers' Market. Come and chat or buy our 2025 Calendar or even our history book.
Conservation Work in the Grove
Tuesday 12th December from 10:00am to 12:30pm
We’ll be pruning shrubs in the Grove. Bring gardening gloves and secateurs if you have them, although we have spares to lend. No special skills needed and refreshments provided.
Meet at the Park Visitor Centre.
Art in the Park
Tuesday 12th December from 10:00am to 11:30pm
An opportunity for park lovers to join others in a relaxed and friendly group to enjoy time spent outdoors, observing nature through drawing, painting or photography. Bring something to sit on and your own materials (though some basics are provided).
The group is free and open to all, whatever your level.
Email allyparkn10@gmail.com to find out more.
RECENT EVENTS IN THE PARK
Art in the Park: 21st November
The temperature forecast for our meet-up time was 2° C, so I really did wonder if anyone would turn up! It was thus heartening to be joined by six other very layered-up and enthusiastic sketchers in our favourite November spot – the woods beneath the Pitch & Putt. I think they deserve a special Art in the Park commendation for attending in all seasons! We ended sitting in a circle as if around a campfire. The chat and pleasure of getting absorbed in some drawing was enough to distract us from the cold. Everyone agreed they were really glad they came out.
Conservation Work in the Park: 19th November
On a dry morning, enthusiastic Alexandra Park volunteer gardeners and Friends of Alexandra Park work party volunteers got down to some serious bulb planting in the Spinney: a mix of 2,000 snowdrops, aconites, wild daffodils and scillas were planted just beyond the newly laid hedge. These will add to what remains of an original display of bulbs in that area and provide a succession of white, yellow and blue sweeps of colour in the spring. The plan to plant and lay the hedge to protect the bulbs from excessive footfall and return spring colour to that area is at last coming to fruition. Thanks to everyone and Leo, the Assistant Park Manager, for making it happen.
Family Art in the Park: 17th November
The weather was perfect – dry, mild and even bright. As the sun glowed through the yellow hornbeam leaves, families enjoyed dipping into three activities. The main theme was mushrooms, and after the recent fungus walk highlighted species in the Grove, Caroline was able to take each family on a mushroom spot before the children launched into making their own clay mushrooms in jar lids. Children and adults alike enjoyed drawing patterns on pressed autumn leaves – a great way to notice their wonderful variety of shapes and veining patterns. And finally, those with more creativity in the tank wrapped sticks with wool to make a stick wand.
Members' History Walk: 16th November
The racecourse occupied a substantial part of Alexandra Park for more than 100 years. Gordon explained the layout of the course, the location of the surprisingly grand grandstand and the lengths of the races, in furlongs of course. In the early years, the press seemed to regard the crowds who turned up to enjoy the racing at Ally Pally as lacking in sophistication. However, it was the Jockey Club that ended the racing – the bends around the cricket pitch were deemed too tight and dangerous for both horse and jockey. The group walked these bends and agreed!
Autumn Fungi Walk: 9th November
First off was artist’s bracket, which starts out looking like blobs of chewing gum bursting through the bark; these grow into the characteristic shelf shape of bracket fungi. In contrast, the velvet shank (pictured) is a cup-and-stem fungus, and the shank (stalk) did indeed feel velvety. On the same stump there was a puffball, a small grape-sized white ball that puffed out spores when prodded. The name sooty bark fungus exactly describes the black covering on a dead sycamore. And to round things off, Clifford was thrilled to spot a brownflesh bracket, a rarity in London. Have a look at the specimen in the Park Visitor Centre.
Conservation Work in the Park: 24th October
On a glorious, sunny morning, 10 of us worked in the Anthill Meadow, attempting to cut back grasses and dead flowering plants at the west end. I say ‘attempting’, as a heavy overnight dew made it difficult despite sharp shears. We did finish the job for this year, enjoying the autumn sunshine while doing so. The song of a chiffchaff, and the appearance of a peregrine overhead, watching us watching it, added to the pleasure. There were quite a few fungi to be seen, the most delightful being coral fungi – thin yellow upright strands among the grasses – and orange-topped wax caps. And Rubén from the O’Conners team gives us a lift back to the PVC with our equipment, which is very much appreciated.
Art in the Park: 17th October
We enjoyed a really beautiful and balmy autumn morning in the Anthill Meadow. The golden sunlight glowed through the tall, wispy seedheads that are so characteristic of this time of year. The problem with such a beautiful scene, though, is the challenge of capturing something of it on paper! One innovative way to get round the problem was to draw round the plant shadows that fell onto the page. Fittingly, these were as fleeting as such autumn mornings themselves. We really did feel lucky to get to enjoy it together in this special part of the park.
Autumn Tree Walk: 12th October
Trees are adapting for winter – some leaves shed, others vividly coloured, different sorts of seeds and fruit. We looked at native English oaks and beeches at the top of hill by the Eastern car park entrance, and exotics, such as fern-leaved beech and honey locust, near the Rose Garden. An interesting mixture of trees grows by the old ski slope, including a weeping ash, poplars, Norway maple, robinia and Caucasian wingnut, the latter an example of how invasive some introduced species can be. Finally, we looked at the wonderful line of oaks next to the Rose Garden, which were probably planted in a hedge that pre-dated the park.
Members' Nature Walk: 6th October
A score of people met up at the base of the BBC Tower. After a deviation towards the Rose Garden where the different foliage on the common and fern-leaved beech were contrasted, we looked a trio of trees near Alexandra Palace Way, the silver birch, common beech and green ash. We then set ourselves a challenge on the walk to see at least 10 wild flowers in flower (succeeded). We saw dandelion, daisy, annual mercury, knapweed, hoary ragwort, red clover, white clover, annual meadow grass, knotgrass and yarrow among others.
Below the BBC Tower we saw a reduced silver maple with a lot of Ganoderma sp. fungi as well as the rot rotter, the giant polypore pictured bottom left.
Further down the slope, we had galling pause. Several galls were seen including the cherry gall pictured top left, marble galls, oyster galls, smooth spangle galls, common spangle galls and large numbers of silk button galls.
We finished the walk walking along the middle path where we contrasting the leaves of field maple, sycamore and Norway maple before glancing at the pattern on a cherry leaf of the apple leaf miner moth.
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