Horsenden Festival of Nature

TIME	ACTIVITY
ALL DAY	Kids Craft Activity: Making prints from nature
11.00	Get to know your trees: Tour of Tree nursery
11.30	Mainstage Talk: Bees and the dangers of Asian Hornets
11.30	Woodland walk and talk on conservation and the history of Rohais Wood
12.00	Tour of the market garden
12.00	An introduction to wildlife and nature photography
12.00	Foraging walk on Horsenden Hill   Places charged at £10 adults, £5 Children 5+
12.30	Horsenden’s working farm tour
12.30	Mainstage Talk: Great Crested Newts & Wetlands
13.00	A walk around Horsenden’s hedgerows
13.30	Meet Horsenden’s Harvest Mice
14.00	Foraging walk on Horsenden HillPlaces charged at £10 adults, £5 Children 5+
14.00	An introduction to wildlife and nature photography
14.00	Woodland walk and talk on conservation and the history of Rohais Wood
14.30	Mainstage Talk:  Ealing Beaver Project
14.30	Tour of the market garden
15.00	Horsenden’s working farm tour
15.30	A walk around Horsenden’s hedgerows
15.30	Mainstage Talk: The Raptors of Ealing
16.30	Raffle winners announcement

Members of the Horsenden Team, and local experts, will be giving their insider insights and behind the scenes glimpses into the world of Horsenden, its flora, fauna and conservation. 

Places on our tours will be limited, pick up your ticket from the Horsenden World stand on the day. Although there is no charge (apart from for the foraging taster course) donations are welcome, we suggest £5 for each tour, but please pay what you can.  

Each tour lasts between 30 minutes and one hour. Your tour guide can tell you more precisely.  

Some tours involve walking on uneven ground, so suitable footwear -trainers, hiking boots, wellies for example – is recommended.

Here’s the low-down to help you plan your day:

Get to know your trees:  11.00 am 

Starting in the tree nursery, you will discover what is there and how we use the trees. Your guide will focus on half a dozen species and how to identify them.  Participants will get an information sheet to help you identify those species.  

Your guide is Anne, custodian of the tree nursery and trustee of Friends of Horsenden

A Woodland walk and talk on conservation and the history of Rohais Wood: 11.30am and 2.00pm 

Discover Rohais, once an impenetrable thicket of ivy and bramble, now being reinvigorated to a multilayered, biodiverse woodland. With conservation at the heart of the work of a dedicated group of volunteers, this area is divulging its secrets of lost gardens and a paupers’ village.

Please note suitable footwear is recommended, Not suitable for kids under 5 or buggies due to narrow woodland paths with stinging nettles and brambles. Walk will be at approx 1 hour

Your guide is Sally, Horsenden volunteer and pioneer of Horsenden Hillbillies

Foraging walk on Horsenden Hill

This is a taster of Charlotte’s Foraging courses – places will be charged at: adults £10, children over 5  £5,  under 5’s free

A meander around the fields and hedgerows searching for wild food and medicine. We’ll discuss recipes, preserving techniques, how to identify plants, how to include wild plants in your everyday life and the relationship between food as medicine and medicine as food.

Led by Charlotte Gordon, Forager and Intuitive Herbalist and friend of the farm

A tour of the market garden: 12.00noon and 2.30pm

Horsenden Farm shop offers a wide range of seasonal fruit and vegetables. Meet the team and visit the growing areas and learn about their tips and techniques that ensure a healthy crop.  Nothing gets wasted at Horsenden and as much as possible goes into the compost bins.  

Following the Charles Dowding ‘No dig’ method and aiming to be as organic as possible, the team has achieved a lot in the last few years and was recognised with a prestigious London in Bloom award for gardening achievements in 2023.  

Your guides are Megan and Penny, Horsenden volunteers 

An introduction to wildlife and nature photography: 12.00noon and 2.30pm 

Your guide, Nigel Bewley, is an award-winning wildlife photographer who has captured many stunning images of Horsenden’s array of birds, butterflies and more.  In this workshop he will go through some basic techniques. Nigel would prefer to show you on your camera rather than mobile phone. 

Your guide is Nigel Bewley, Local photographer

Horsenden’s Working farm tour:  12.30pm and 3.00pm 

A great opportunity to visit areas of the farm the public rarely see including how we take care of the animals and their role in conservation grazing and biodiversity. Horsenden Farm is home to several rare breeds. Currently there is a small herd of Shetland cattle – two cows and two calves born earlier this year; two goats, four pigs, a flock of hens and three geese.  

Your guides are Nick (12.30) and Elsa (3.00), Horsenden volunteers and members of  Horsenden’s rare breeds team. 

A walk around Horsenden’s hedgerows: 1.00pm  and 3.30pm 

Learn about the hedges at Horsenden, how they are managed, how they support wildlife and how you can get involved as a volunteer. Hedges have always been important for wildlife but intensive farming over decades mean many have disappeared. 

More recently their importance is being recognised once more and hedges are being restored and replaced across the UK.  

Horsenden’s hedges are a sight to behold and this tour will take you round some of them where you can learn more about this ancient craft that we have practised at Horsenden for several years.  

Your guide is Justin, Horsenden’s Chief hedge layer, volunteer and trustee of Friends of Horsenden 

Horsenden’s Harvest Mice: 1.30pm 

Harvest mice have been reintroduced to the wild after the last sighting in Perivale in 1981. The breeding programme at Horsenden, responsible for the reintroduction, has a display house where you can see them for yourselves and find out more about Britain’s smallest mammal. 

The talk will be given by Lesley, ‘Mousewife’, one of the Horsenden and Ealing Wildlife Group Harvest Mice Team