We are proud to announce that all three of our Abundance London gardens which were submitted to the Ealing Bodiversity Awards for Gardens and Green Spaces Competition 2026 have won!

Abundance London looks after nearly 40 pocket parks across the Boroughs of Hounslow and Ealing, with most in the Chiswick area. The acknowledgement by Cultivating Ealing (formerly Ealing in Bloom) is a very welcome honour. The support of Ealing Parks and Ealing Housing team and councillors is a very important element in our success.

With nature under extreme stress everywhere, these small urban pockets of biodiversity provide essential oases for nature. And by caring for them the Abundance volunteers show that they care about their neighbourhood. Flytipping and destruction become unacceptable and rare, local friendships are made, and a sense of civic pride and co-operation is fostered. In this world with its grim news, these signs of optimism and hope are increasingly important.

While our three award-winning gardens take the spotlight today, all our gardens are fantastic, all our volunteers are magnificent! Especially in this heat and drought… Our fruit-picking team is currently working at full stretch, with several hundred kilograms of apples and plums collected over the last fortnight and distributed to various food banks.

Commended: Plane Tree Garden (aka Southfield Road/Acton Lane) is a small green space just south of the railway bridge dominated by large plane trees. In 2024 Barney Kynoch, with his parents as obedient under-gardeners and another neighbour helping, began to clear what was essentially a fly-tipped wasteland, as part of Duke of Edinburgh Award. Since then it has become a shady island of biodiversity. Commended.

Barney doing his D of E award, now with a new award for his mantlepiece

Very Highly Commended: Meon Garden started last year under the leadership of Ian Pritchard on the corner of Meon Road and Acton Lane. Half the street residents turned out to transform a nasty flytipped corner, a centre for anti-social behaviour, into a welcoming garden.

Meon Garden

Highly Commended: Beaconsfield Gardens, the largest of our spaces, and the inspiration for several of the other gardens, lies along Acton Lane. Described as a “neglected grassy verge” before we started work on it, this is now a flourishing small park, a vision in spring, a haven of biodiversity throughout the year. Instead of flytipping, builders’ skips and unmentionable activity, we now have flourishing trees, wildflower greenery with a meandering path, bee columns, a stumpery and a genuine pride and sense of community. Inspired leadership from Jen Thorndycraft who in addition to being the volunteer Head Gardener for this space, also works as Head of Community Projects for Abundance.

Spring event 2026 at Beaconsfield. Photo by Jen Thorndycraft

We will be celebrating all aspects of Abundance London’s work on Saturday September 5th at the annual Big Apple Day at Chiswick Library.

Karen Liebreich
Director, Abundance London