Creating a buzz - Acton Central Energy Garden

Launch on Friday 18 May at 14.20-15.30

Platform 1, Acton Central Overground station, Churchfield Rd, Acton W3 6BH

Dr Rupa Huq, MP for Ealing Central and Acton, will formally open a pioneering community-inspired garden installed alongside a platform in Acton Central Station on Friday 18 May. The Acton Central Energy Garden project is a partnership initiative delivered by Repowering London, Groundwork UK, Charushila and Transport for London, in conjunction with the local community.

Agamemnon Otero, CEO of Energy Garden & Repowering London: “Transforming travel on the overground, Energy Garden helps passengers to connect with London. Being able to see fruit trees, vegetables and even bees at points along their journey not only creates a more interesting environment on platforms but can improve air quality, enhance local biodiversity and be an educational resource for Londoners”

Sumita Singha, Executive Director of Charushila: “Station platforms can be bleak spaces- making them places for inspiration, reflection and natural beauty within pragmatic kitchen gardens, with the involvement with the local community and station staff, elevates them as meaningful resources for understanding wider issues of community engagement, food growing and climate change”

Mark Wild, Managing Director of London Underground: “We love our stations to be welcoming, to be part of the community, to be places that our customers enjoy and to be great places for our stations workers. … I’m so pleased we have been able to contribute to this project, as schemes like this are the pinnacle of what we do on the Tube”

The launch of the Acton Central Energy Garden on Friday 18 May 2018 begins at 2.20pm and will be officially opened by Rupa Huq MP at 2.30pm, followed by presentations by the community partners involved. All are invited to hear more about Energy Garden and its next phase, how to get involved, how to benefit and how to invest.

A stone plaque with an inscription by a Buddhist sage, Nichiren Daishonin, has been installed in the platform garden with the inscription “Winter always turns to spring”. The general director of the lay Buddhist organisation Soka Gakkai UK (SGI-UK), Robert Harrap, will give a brief introduction to Nichiren Buddhism, with an explanation about the inspirational quote “Winter always turns to spring”. SGI-UK has a local centre nearby on Acton High Street.

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Notes to editors

For more information about the project, please contact:

Energy Garden: is the first city-wide combined community gardening and community energy project which goes far further than installing solar powered lights and water pumps. It helps to create resilient communities and improve the health and wellbeing of Londoners, as well as providing educational programmes and biodiversity measures.

w: www.energygarden.org.uk

t: EnergyGardenLDN on Twitter or

f: EnergyGardenLondon on Facebook

e: info@energygarden.org.uk

m: 07960 829826

Charushila: is a charity which uses a participatory design process, and has engaged with the local community to develop the design of the garden at Acton Central and worked with volunteers to build and maintain it.

w: http://charushila.org

t: charushila_org on Twitter or

f: charushila.org on Facebook

e: contact@charushila.org