By Paul Wood, author of London’s Street Trees, London is a Forest and others.

I am hugely excited to have been part of the TreeTalk team publishing, for the first time, the data and tree map for Hackney, showing what species are planted, and where they are, proving that Hackney is London’s urban arboretum. 

When I was researching my book, London’s Street Trees, I was amazed to discover the variety of tree species growing in Hackney. Take a short residential street like Lavers Road in Stoke Newington for instance – rare species like Bee-bee tree, Pineapple guava and Crêpe myrtle grow there, along with at least a dozen other more familiar species. Now, you too can discover what grows on streets and in parks right across the borough.

Mayor Caroline Woodley said, “We’re really excited to see TreeTalk introduced to Hackney. We have planted hundreds of different species as part of our urban tree planting programme, and this resource encourages residents to explore the incredible diversity of nature that enriches our borough in an accessible way.”

Here are some of the fascinating insights from TreeTalk for Hackney's trees:

Hackney has over 500 different tree species, subspecies and cultivars, that’s more than any other borough. For comparison, the next most diverse, Camden, has just 350.

TreeTalk calculates how rare trees are by comparing each entry to determine how many of each species there are across London. We call these our Gold, Silver and Bronze trees*. In Hackney there are 53 Gold, 78 Silver and 40 Bronze trees, while in neighbouring Islington, just 6 Gold, 26 Silver and 40 Bronze trees can be found.

In order to calculate these stats, the company behind the initiative, Greentalk, has processed tree data from 26 London boroughs. TreeTalk displays over 850,000 individual trees across London, of which 33,000 are those in Hackney.

All these trees are displayed on TreeTalk, where users can explore the diversity of trees and discover what grows nearby. Since TreeTalk was updated in June 2024, more rich features have been launched enabling registered users to generate walking routes among the trees, and add individual trees as their personal Favourites.

TreeTalk is brought to you by Greentalk Limited. It is free to use, and free to register.

* Gold trees are those represented by fewer than 10 specimens across the city, Silver those with between 11 and 75, and Bronze trees are those with between 76 and 200.