The new-look entrance to "Palmer's Green" station. Unfortunately, the employee in the orange hi-vis jacket wasn't leaning over at quite the right angle to mimic the orange Palmer's logo!
Eagle-eyed readers who've travelled by train or gone past our local station since Monday will have noticed new signage over the door: "Palmers Green" has become Palmer's with an apostrophe Green. Go down the stairs and onto the platform and more changes will be revealed, many incorporating the distinctive orange logo of the American company Palmer's, whose skincare products are mainly based on cocoa butter or coconut oil.
So what's this all about? Will it make the train service run more smoothly? (Some hope!)
No, the two-week "takeover" of the station by Palmer's has the aim of "raising awareness about reforestation and its environmental impact". It's linked to the "Palmer's Forest" project, which involves the family-owned company planting up to 24,000 trees in Cameroon. Palmer's claim that this will offset the warming effect on the climate of more than 12,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, which they say is equivalent to the greenhouse gases produced by13,505 flights from London to New York.
The large planter on platform 2 after being given the Palmer's makeover
To bring home the environmental message the company has created a "green and leafy living wall", decorated the stairway ceilings with foliage and provided more planting on the platforms. They will continue to care for the plants for several weeks to keep them green and helping purify the air around the platforms. And there will be free giveaways for passengers in the form of seed papers which they can plant at home.
The idea of using Palmers Green station for the promotion (or, in advertiser-speak, "a verdant takeover of Palmers Green tube(!) station") came from the advertising agency John Ayling & Associates, whose commercial director Sue Fernando-Soli calls it "a tree-mendous idea".