Roots and Shoots Goes Wild! Autumn Community Day

Roots and Shoots Goes Wild! - our autumnal community open day returned for a second time on Sunday 6th October 2024, with over 500 local visitors. The day replaces the historically very popular Apple Day as our annual fall event, and is centred around connecting Londoners of all ages directly with wildlife and nature via seasonal activities, workshops and entertainment across our urban green site.

In the Wild Garden, visitors hunted for flowers, berries and all manner of tiny wild creatures who lurk under fallen logs and between bushes, learning from our Safari Guides how even the tiniest of life forms contribute to our ecosystem. Under the Oak tree, storytelling and live music returned to rapturous applause - often from up in the oak tree itself! Visitors then took inspiration from their creature finds and recreated them as part of arts and crafts activities in the Natural Roots Building.

In our newly built sustainable Apple Barn Classroom, visitors met some more exotic guests via WildScience, including several snakes, a tortoise and a surprisingly relaxed bunny rabbit given the company. Even more exotic still, in the Bubble Gate Garden the wonderfully magical Mechanical Dragon returned to charm us all with it's music, movements, and fittingly, bubbles!

We think it's time we all get our hands into the soil, and so for Goes Wild we teamed up with nature skills charity Earthed, who invited their members to help us plant spring bulbs in our new community bee meadow. A big thank you to all the Earthed volunteers who came and planted several thousand native and pollinator-friendly bulbs which will feed our bees and other insects in spring, and make our local public spaces more beautiful for all!

Earthed Volunteers planted over 1000 bulbs

Visitors did yet more to support our wildlife by creating bug hotels from recycled and gathered natural materials for our gardens and their own in the greenhouse, ensuring that our overwintering insects have more habitat to hibernate in. And to fuel all these good efforts, local vegan street food maestros Feed the Village came to, well, feed our village, serving delicious curries and onion bhajis.

Storytelling under (and in!) the oak tree in the Wild Garden

Thank you all for visiting Roots and Shoots for another brilliant day out, we look forward to seeing you all at our next event - a flower-themed FlourishFest in May 2025!