New woodland garden mural celebrates Benjamin Zephaniah’s Nature Trail

Have you spotted the new mural yet? It’s on the tool shed by the Longhill Road entrance and features some of the beautiful birds, insects and plants that you can see in the park’s woodland areas. Painted by Aspire Artwork, it is part of a broader piece of work to celebrate and improve our beautiful woodland garden.

The mural feature’s the final verse of one of the legendary Benjamin Zephaniah’s best known poems, Nature Trail. This is a firm favourite for many local schools and families, celebrating the diversity and beauty of nature.

There’s a hedgehog and a frog
And a lot of creepy-crawlies
Living underneath a log,
There’s a baby daddy long legs
And an easy-going snail
And a family of woodlice,
All are on my nature trail.

There are caterpillars waiting
For their time to come to fly,
There are worms turning the earth over
As ladybirds fly by,
Birds will visit, cats will visit
But they always chose their time
And I’ve even seen a fox visit
This wild garden of mine.

Squirrels come to nick my nuts
And busy bees come buzzing
And when the night time comes
Sometimes some dragonflies come humming,
My garden mice are very shy
And I’ve seen bats that growl
And in my garden I have seen
A very wise old owl.

My garden is a lively place
There’s always something happening,
There’s this constant search for food
And then there’s all that flowering,
When you have a garden
You will never be alone
And I believe we all deserve
A garden of our own.

Want to read more of this joyful celebration of nature? You can borrow the book version from Lewisham Libraries .

Green Flag and London in Bloom Gold Awards

Along with other parks and nature reserves in the borough that are already designated, Forster Park has recently achieved national ‘Green Flag’ status.

This is in recognition of the quality and management of its space, community involvement, recreational use and of measures to boost biodiversity including within the ancient woodland. 

Forster Park has also been recognised with a Gold in the London in Bloom awards for a large park, which celebrates and recognises volunteer and community efforts to make the Capital greener, increase biodiversity and enhance neighbourhood communities.

We are very proud of these achievements and we hope you are too!

We’re especially grateful to our incredible volunteers, the Council’s Parks team and Glendale who manage the park on behalf of the Council, the Frothy Coffee Hut team, all the community partners involved in the park – and our amazing sensory garden team, who won over the judges with our wonderful community space that so many of us enjoy being in.