Community screening: The People's Emergency Briefing — 28 May at the Masbro Centre

A free community screening of The People's Emergency Briefing is taking place at the Masbro Centre in Hammersmith later this month, and we're sharing the invitation with anyone in the Friends who might be interested in attending.

About The People's Emergency Briefing

The People's Emergency Briefing is a 45-minute film, fronted by Chris Packham, drawing on footage from last November's National Emergency Briefing in Westminster — where leading UK scientists and experts presented evidence on the climate and nature crisis and its implications for extreme weather, food security, health, and the cost of living. The film also features Deborah Meaden alongside a range of voices from across the UK. The screening is part of a national community rollout, followed by a short open discussion on what the evidence means locally.

The event is organised by The Green Londoner and the H&F Climate Action Group. Local MPs and H&F councillors have been invited to attend.

The details

• Date: Thursday 28 May 2026

• Time: 18:15–20:30

• Location: Masbro Centre, 87 Masbro Road, London W14 0LR

• Cost: Free; registration required; places are limited

• Book here: tixtree.com

The organisers welcome residents, local businesses, and volunteer groups from across the borough, including people who haven't previously engaged with these topics. Please feel free to share the invitation onward with anyone in your networks who might want to attend.

Reclaiming the Main Gate: April 2026 at the Japanese Garden of Peace

Sunday 26 April brought fourteen Friends to the Japanese Garden of Peace in Hammersmith Park under unbroken sunshine, five of them joining us for the first time. We were also pleased to welcome back a group of students from a Japanese school near Slough, on their second visit this year. The sakura was at peak bloom, with circles of pink petals fallen on the lawns beneath each tree, and the warm spring weekend the day before had left the garden busy with visitors — and, as we discovered on arrival, with quite a lot of litter for us to deal with first.

Across the garden | A morning's litter pick

Before any tools came out, Friends worked through the lawns, beds, and perimeter areas to collect what had been left behind on Saturday. Drinks cans, food wrappers, and bits of plastic were spread broadly enough that we needed to cover the whole garden rather than focus on one corner. By the time we were done, the morning's haul filled a healthy run of black waste sacks. Less satisfying than horticultural work, but a necessary first step before we could begin anything else.

Mature trees and sakura | Removing suckers and epicormic growth

Two of the garden's mature trees and three of the sakura had developed a dense ring of suckers and epicormic growth around their bases over the winter. Left in place, this kind of growth diverts water and nutrients away from the main canopy, encourages disease at the trunk base, and gradually disrupts the natural form of the tree. Friends worked round each one removing the new shoots cleanly at the collar, taking care to avoid damaging the bark. The trunks now stand cleanly out of the lawn again, with no clutter at the base.

Streams and ponds | Weeding the banks and stepping stones

A small team turned to the pond banks, stream margins, and the gaps between the stepping stones, all of which had filled in with weeds during the run-up to the season. Most of the work was done by hand to ensure the roots came up cleanly rather than leaving stubs to regrow. Particular attention went to areas where the new growth had begun to crowd or obscure our intended planting along the water's edge. Modest as it sounds, this kind of edge maintenance makes a real difference to how the streams and ponds read as a designed feature rather than a wild one.

Main gate | The start of a sustained effort

The strip of garden inside the railings to the right of the main gate has been quietly running wild for years. It hadn't been touched in any sustained way in a very long time, and what should be a clear stretch of planting had become a mess of ivy, dead wood, and self-sown growth tangled through and over the existing shrubs and trees. Sunday's session was the first push at putting that right. Friends pruned overgrown trees, took out one young tree that had seeded itself in the wrong place, and stripped back ivy and dead growth from the railings inwards. There is still a great deal more to do — we expect this area to occupy us for at least another two sessions — but the first significant progress in years has now been made.

Stone basin area | Continuing low bamboo removal

Behind the stone basin area, work continued on the gradual removal of a stand of low bamboo, picking up a project a corporate group started for us last year and which we ourselves came back to at the March session. Bamboo of this kind is slow to clear because the rhizomes spread well beyond the visible canes, so each session takes out another section rather than the whole. Today's work moved further into the stand and the area is now noticeably more open than it was a month ago.

Bamboo | Limited pruning amid an uptick in breakage

Bamboo work was deliberately light this session. Most of what was cut had already been broken — and that, unfortunately, is what we wanted to flag. The warmer weather has brought more visitors through the garden, and with them an uptick in casual damage to the canes. This is a real concern for our cloud-pruned bunches, which take several seasons of patient shaping to reach their current form and cannot easily be rebuilt once disrupted. To compensate, we will be leaving more new shoots to grow than we normally would, on the basis that some will need to take the place of any further canes lost over the coming months.

Thanks | A productive April at the Japanese Garden of Peace

A warm thank-you to all fourteen Friends who came out on Sunday — particularly the five who joined us for the first time, and the visiting students who once again brought their energy and curiosity with them. Eight ton bags of green waste went out at the end of the day, lower than usual but reflective of how much of the morning went to litter and how much of the afternoon went to slower, more careful work at the main gate and behind the stone basin area. The next session is Sunday 31 May, and there is a great deal more to do at the main gate before then.

Sakura, Students, and Fourteen Bags: March 2026 at the Japanese Garden of Peace

The 2026 season opened at the Japanese Garden of Peace with thirteen Friends gathered under cherry blossom that could not have timed itself better. Most of the team were newcomers, which is always a good sign for the year ahead, and we were joined by a lively group of students from a Japanese school near Slough whose enthusiasm lifted the whole morning. The weather did what March weather tends to do — grey one moment, bright the next — but the sakura was at its peak, and working beneath petals drifting down onto the grass made even the fiddliest jobs feel like the right way to spend a Sunday. By the end of the session, fourteen ton bags of green waste were lined up for collection: more than one per volunteer, and a proper statement for a first outing.

Streams and ponds | Early carex removal and litter picking

Carex is our annual tax, and the rate goes up the longer you leave it. In March the clumps are still small and the roots haven't set properly, so a well-judged hour or two now saves days of work in July. We moved steadily along both stream banks and around the pond margins, lifting young growth before it could settle in. We also tackled a handful of older, well-established clumps that had started pushing into neighbouring planting — those needed more persuasion, but they came out in the end. Running alongside the carex work, a rolling litter pick along the water courses cleared the winter's accumulation of drifting rubbish. It's not glamorous, but it's the single quickest way to make the garden read as cared for rather than forgotten.

Bamboo | Thinning and reshaping

The bamboo work this month was maintenance rather than transformation. Friends thinned selected canes in the taller groves, opening up light and keeping the groupings from turning into solid walls, and reshaped the low bamboo hedging that had lost its clean line over the winter. Nothing dramatic — just the kind of steady, repeated attention that keeps the cloud-pruned silhouettes reading properly and the groves looking intentional. If April and May are where the heavy bamboo battles tend to happen, March is where we make sure the baseline is in good order.

Main gate | The start of a sustained effort

The main gate is where visitors form their first impression of the garden, and it had been telling the wrong story. The beds flanking the gateway were thick with leaf litter, encroaching ivy, and self-seeded weeds from the quiet months, and the planting around the stone lantern needed real attention rather than a quick tidy. We made a firm start — clearing the worst of the build-up, opening up sight lines, and beginning to restore the shape of the beds — but this is a multi-session project rather than a one-day job. Expect the gate area to feature in reports through April and well beyond, as we work our way back to the standard it deserves.

Beds | Clearing invasive species

Bramble had taken advantage of winter to push into several beds across the garden, and a handful of other opportunists had done the same. Catching bramble at this stage, before the runners have had time to root properly, is the difference between a satisfying afternoon's work and a summer-long battle. We worked through the affected beds systematically, pulling and cutting, and left them looking like themselves again.

Thanks | A generous start for the Japanese Garden of Peace

Heartfelt thanks to every one of the thirteen Friends who turned out for the first session of the year, and in particular to the visiting students whose energy and good humour gave the day a character all of its own. A first session always sets a tone, and this one set a generous one. The sakura did its part too — fourteen ton bags of green waste, most of them gathered under drifting white petals, is not a bad way to start 2026.