Visits of up to 30 minutes are free for everyone, and Blue Badge holders are not charged at all. Full details are on the palace’s car-park charging FAQs page. 

The park has won its 16th Green Flag Award (and its Green Heritage Award). Head to the palace’s website to read a list of facts about the park – and to spot the one that’s made up. 

Sorry we have had to postpone our autumn bird walk until Sunday, 17th September.

Still fancy a bird walk in Alexandra Park on Sunday, 3rd September? The London Bird Club are running one starting at 10am from Wood Green station. More details here.

Join us for a creative morning immersed in the nature of Alexandra Park, where we'll have lots of fun discovering how to use natural materials as paintbrushes. We will experiment and use our imaginations to create paintings and drawings in unusual ways. It might get messy!

We'll discover how varied the grasses and 'weeds' of the park actually are when we take time to look more closely at them and we'll notice how things are changing as we get into late summer. 

This will be a relaxed, informal session for families to enjoy some creative time together in nature. Children of all ages are welcome and parents/carers/grandparents are encouraged to join in the fun as much as they would like to! There should be something for everyone.

Facilitated by local artist and Art in the Park co-ordinator, Katy Fattuhi.

To book your place, please email us (mention the number of people you are booking for and the children's ages) 

Meeting location will be confirmed with you closer to the event. 

Be sure to catch the last of the summer concerts in the Grove.....

First session of two this month.

No special skills needed. We’ll be cutting the grass on the western side. Bring gardening gloves if you have them, although we have spares to lend. Refreshments provided.
Meet in the Anthill Meadow.

For more details email  AllyParkN10@gmail.com

Let’s have a look at the flowers that are out in early autumn. We will have two walks starting at 11am and 2:30pm. Please email AllyParkN10@gmail.com stating which time and how many people will attend and we will give the meeting place.

Our rearranged autumn bird walk will start in The Grove Car Park at 8am. Gareth will try and find us some of the seasonal migrants passing through park as well as pointing out some of our resident birds.

All welcome, no booking required.

Second session of two this month.

No special skills needed. We’ll be cutting the grass on the western side. Bring gardening gloves if you have them, although we have spares to lend. Refreshments provided.
Meet in the Anthill Meadow.

For more details email  AllyParkN10@gmail.com

On a lovely sunny morning, 11 of us cut back bramble leaders, revealing the terrific crop of blackberries. It was hot work but much was achieved with a practised wielding of secateurs. There were still several butterflies flitting about, including the male common blue pictured (whose female is deceptively similar to the brown argus – see ‘Nature notes’ above). Many birds were seen and heard, including a flock of mixed tits (long-tailed, great and blue), with blackcaps, willow warblers and chiffchaffs amongst them. And there were still many flowers, the most plentiful being the pale lemon flowers of the hoary ragwort. We were sustained by some wonderful apple flapjacks that one of our number had cooked to share with us.

Due to illness, this was postponed by 24 hours and a replacement walk leader was found although most the information was supplied by Robyn who was due to lead the walk. We highlighted four trees field maple (pictured left - pictured taken by Alessandra Rossetti), hawthorn, blackthorn and ash.

Ash was used for chassis of old Morgan cars and field maple was a specialist wood especially good for bridges of violins.

Hawthorn with its red haws (the official name its berries) and blackthorn with its dark purple sloes were on show for our walk from Nightingale Lane to the North View Road entrance. We heard about how the blackthorn flowers come out first (before its own leaves) then the hawthorn ("May") comes out later in the year.

In order to help narrow down the identification of some of the trees, we also emphasised the different leaf/branch attachment types of the trees using this crib sheet.

The threatened rain held off and four families enjoyed searching for bugs and butterflies. Two different species of butterfly were found small white and speckled wood as well a cricket and a grasshopper as well many true bugs including an immature green shieldbug. A large yellow underwing moth was caught together with many small spiders and mirid bugs. A couple of small ladybirds (22-spots) as well as three larger one (harlequins). A fullish list of what was found can be inspected here.

We were lucky with the weather for our evening nature walk, warm and pleasant. We looked at the trees in the Redston Field including the remaining Italian Poplars, Oak trees (one with an old oak processionary moth nest), a Columella Elm (not quite the tree ordered!) and evidence of the aptly named Elm zigzag sawfly (pictured left).

Next to the field, we inspected the settling pond - used to stop flooding of nearby houses and to filter out any noxious materials running down from the Fairground/Paddock car parks.

We took an off-path look for an exotic fern (Western Sword Fern) which has made its home in the park.

Looking just off the paddock car park, we spotted a tomato plant happily growing.

We finished off walking along the Lower Path trying to get a view of the noisy sparrowhawks........

We had a good turnout – 14 people – and mostly good butterfly weather (sunny and windless), though it was breezy and cloudy at times. From the Gas Hut Dee led us along the Lower Road, spotting plenty of butterflies on the brambles, including gatekeepers and holly blues. We then went into the Anthill Meadow, at which point it clouded over a bit. In spite of this we saw a red admiral, a small copper, meadow browns and more gatekeepers. The ragwort and bramble were popular with all of them. Finally we went over to the fenced patch of creeping thistle on the Old Racecourse. There we saw small, large and green-veined whites (the latter pictured left by Tony Jakeman). There were many gatekeepers there too. 

On a rather dismal and dank morning, 12 of us set to work to fight back the brambles in the Spinney (the woodland at the edge of the Grove). It felt more like battling in a primeval jungle, with the forest of briars and hogweed skeletons, and to top it all there were many froglets jumping around our feet. We found a buff-tailed bumblebee nest in the depths of a bramble, as well as very delicate, small white mushrooms on some woody debris – pinwheel mushroom (picture by Helen Odozi), common in deciduous woodland. We did make very good progress, reducing the bramble bank and improving the habitat for the snowdrops and scilla in spring.

  Please do remember to check out the Anthill Meadow this month, especially on a sunny day – the knapweed, willowherb and ragwort are in flower, and the butterflies seem to be doing well this year, despite the damp conditions. 

Back for another year. The weather looked very dodgy just before the start with rain spotting, but as soon as the music started the rain stopped and eventually the sun came out. Swingbusters entertained us with great tunes including My Baby just cares for me, Black Coffee, Night Owl, and Java Jive.

A lovely summery session in a quiet and lesser known but beautiful part of the park – just to the east of Pitch & Putt. We spread out along an avenue of horse chestnuts. The sunlight caught the long grass as the crickets hummed and we all very felt very peaceful in our little 'spot in the country' in the metropolis. Members of the group tried a range of drawing approaches this time, including lots of tiny sketches, with notes on sounds heard while drawing, and bold rubbings of a tree bark.