Possibly not all neighbours have heard the very surprising news that Network Rail are proposing to repossess and demolish The Flower Lady’s flower shop next to the station to make way for an electricity substation – having, at this late stage, discovered that they need such a thing to provide power for the renovated shops in Station Square!

They told us on Friday that they were going to have to serve notice on Elaine, and have made suggestions about her moving to one of the new units when they become available.

There are numerous issues here. It may be enough to say at this stage that the news has caused great anger across the community. Our newly-elected councillors are already on the case, and the Herne Hill Society has issued a  vigourous statement which can be seen on the Society’s blog here.

In response, Network Rail have come back with the following statement:

“We are currently looking carefully at suggestions made at a meeting with our tenant last week, as well as reviewing other options that were previously considered.

We are doing this as quickly as possible in order to be in a position to update our tenant.

We are committed to delivering the refurbished units at Railton Road as soon as possible and will continue to update local politicians as well as the Herne Hill Forum and Herne Hill Society.”

La lutte continue …!

We’ll refrain from our own comment, but gladly point readers to the lively postscript filed by  Jason Cobb at Brixton Blog, who followed Friday’s count at the Oval.

He reserves a controversial paragraph for the complications of Herne Hill Ward.

You’ll need to excuse his sometimes spikey language.

Here it is.

That’s enough politics for now.

People who follow such things will undoubtedly know the results of yesterday’s elections already. The campaigning  in Herne Hill was particularly lively, wasn’t it? And the results were unusually close.

For the record, here are the figures:

A thoughtful appeal from one of the leading figures in the Herne Hill Forum.

Hanami is the Japanese Cherry Blossom Festival.

As explained in Paul Wood’s excellent book “London’s Street Trees – A Field Guide To The Urban Forest”*, the Hanami festival takes place in Japan every spring, to celebrate both the arrival of the new season and the sensual and transient beauty of flowering cherry trees.

He goes on to say that London is graced with many fine cherry avenues, but that the most beautiful cherry tree street has to be Winterbrook Road in Herne Hill. “It is planted exclusively with the wonderful Japanese Yoshino variety. This exceptional planting scheme – a street uniformly planted with a single spectacular species – is a great role model for other London streets and down to the vision of one woman”.

Mr Wood explains that this was Ms Robin Crookshank Hilton, a former local councillor, who was inspired by the cherry planting in Washington DC where she grew up. Washington is famed for its cherries, gifted by Tokyo after the Second World War. [In fact there are one or two other species on Winterbrook Road but as they are not in leaf when the cherry trees are in blossom, they do not in any way compete for attention.]

The Yoshino cherry is the most frequently planted species in Tokyo. If we get another sunny day in this miserable spring, it is worth trotting over to Winterbrook Road (or the neighbouring Stradella Road) to see our own local display before the wind blows it away like confetti.

*published in 2017 by Safe Haven Books

++ UPDATE ++ UPDATE ++  UPDATE ++ UPDATE ++

This event has been postponed: see Twitter announcement below.

It’s not on Fawnbrake, but still worth signalling, as Herne Hill is actually quite famous for its Japanese Yoshino cherry tree blossoms  –  now coming into bloom along Winterbrook Road, we hope.

Paul Wood, author of the excellent ‘London Street Trees‘ (Guardian Nature Books  of 2017) is leading a walk on Sunday morning to entice us to Explore the Urban Forest in Herne Hill.

Sunday 25 March 10.30am-12.30pm Start: Herne Hill rail station, London SE24 0JW.

Details and tickets here.