Transition Town Tooting

Category: Community Garden

Community Garden in London SW16 run by Transition Town Tooting. Come down and get your hands dirty!

  • It’s International Compost Awareness Week! Here’s lots of ways to get involved for 52 weeks & more

    Over seventy years ago the 
    organic agriculture pioneer 
    Sir Albert Howard stated :
     “The health of soil, plant, 

    animal and man 
    is one and indivisible”

    Taking care of the soil where we grow our food, making compost, reducing waste, healthy eating, exploring the ‘circular economy’ of growing plants, beginning to understand the web of beneficial organisms that exists below and above ground:  

    our gardens, kitchens, eating and shopping preferences are the forums for all of these.
    We can all learn more and make our own contributions even more valuable, right here in Tooting.


    Wandsworth Borough Council has published a post in its website about food waste and composting, and we’re copying some of the links here because they are accessible and practical ways being offered this spring and summer to learn more and share experience.

    • Firstly, there’s the Wandsworth Composting Project – all the details are here in this flier. TTT and other partners are contributing too.
    • Secondly there’s a practical workshop on composting skills on June 4th at Bramford Community Garden – here’s the flier.
    • Thirdly, there’s the Grow Your Own at Home! gardening classes sponsored by Be Enriched, taking place near Tooting Broadway and starting on June 10th. Here’s the flier.

    In June and early July there are further public compost advice sessions planned – when the dates are fixed we’ll share them.

    Home composting may look like a dark art: 
    these events will share the skills to demistify it for local residents.

    The Wildlife Gardening Forum has a website that’s a treasure house of experience, including a good web page on soil and fertility: click here to read it.

    Home composters provide a community service as well as benefiting our own gardens by returning organic material to the soil. We remove kilos of kitchen waste per household every week from the borough’s waste transport and processing. That borough service has a carbon cost as well as a financial cost – we can reduce both costs by working with our waste to recognise it as a valuable resource.


    Wandsworth Food Partnership  is complementary to these topics. It’s been developing over the past year as a network of people and organisations interested in food in Wandsworth. That means community groups, enterprises, charities, churches, gardens, schools, the health sector…

    Taking part is not restricted and maybe in time there will be thousands of members including families and individuals: all contributing to developing the local food culture in diverse ways.
    There’s a WFP facebook page, please get in contact for more detail.

      You’ll see our priorities on the WFP shopping bag:
      > Working together
      > Reducing food waste
      > Sustainability
      > Cultural aspects of food
      > Healthy eating
      > Physical activity

      Over the next twelve months the partnership is going to act as a hub: inspiring, celebrating, sharing, linking and reaching out to as many local groups and people as possible in each of these priority areas.

      These food priorities can all interrelate locally to inspire a positive food culture in Wandsworth. 
      In a similar way, soil organisms combine to create good compost in our gardens….

    • Tooting Pollinator Party Sunday 21st May!

      We’d like to welcome everyone to the Tooting Community Garden on Sunday 21st May from 12:00 to 4:00 for our free Pollinator Party!
      Find us at 5 North Drive, SW16 1RN.

      What’s a Pollinator Party?
      It’s a lovely afternoon in the garden. We’re mixing together fun and instructive activities that focus on planting, beneficial insects and sharing our own growing experience of city gardening, Tooting style. 

       
      What’s good for our gardens and insects is also good for us!

      What can you come and do on the 21st?

      • We’ll celebrate the Community Garden’s 6th birthday with games, volcano kettle tea – and a cake. 
      • We’ll offer practical do-it-yourself making opportunities – creating cloches from plastic bottles and inventing wall planters from textile and plywood for strawberries or herbs.
      • We’ll have quizzes and activities about insects and pollination – and Lola Godoy’s geodesic dome to enjoy as a special habitat during the afternoon.
      • We’ll have a rolling workshop to distribute plants to the local people who have already signed up to join in with the Pollinator Paths Wandsworth project. Developed with London Sustainability Exchange, in this project 4 borough community gardens are each involving local gardeners (novices too) who will grow insect-friendly plants throughout 2017 on balconies, patios, at school, in the street and in back gardens. Over 60 local gardeners will share what they see, learn, enjoy and taste.
      • Feel free to relax, bring a picnic (we’re an alcohol-free site) – and of course do some gardening if you like.

       

       

      Timetable:
      We’ll run all the activities throughout the afternoon – and we’ll stop for tea together and blow out the candles on the cake at 3:30 pm.

      We’re very pleased that the day is part of both the Wandsworth Arts Fringe and the Chelsea Fringe: both full of other great events.

      We want this project, and all our community garden sessions, to help inspire new links, share skills and spark growing in lots of diverse settings across the whole borough.

      Lola and her dome will be with us on the 21st!
      Where are the Pollinator Paths project plants coming from?
      Almost all of them have been grown in Tooting by our friends at Share in their lovely garden tucked away in Springfield Hospital. Perennial plants and bulbs have been ordered in. The result is high quality and very low ‘plant miles’, a great sustainability feature of the project.
      Nasturtium & lemon lavender
      Bare-rooted red currants
      Please email us if you have any queries about the Pollinator Party or the ‘PPW’ project.

      Join in the Pollinator Paths Wandsworth facebook page to keep in touch with the project, and read the project description here.
      And finally, here’s the first post (for April) in the series that will continue telling the project story throughout 2017.

      How to carry a planter home

    • Sowing the seeds in TTT’s ACE goody bags

      If you took home one of our TTT goodie bags and are wondering what to do with the packet of seeds in it, here are some simple planting instructions.

      Radish 

      You can grow these in the ground or in containers or window boxes.
      Sow thinly in soil and cover with 1.5cm fine soil. Firm down gently and keep moist.
      Seedlings should appear within 2-3 weeks.
      Thin out the plants if necessary and keep soil moist. Radishes should be ready to harvest in 4-6 weeks.

      Lettuce
      You can grow these in the ground, containers or even hanging baskets (good for evading snails!)

      Sow thinly in soil and cover with 1.5cm fine soil.

      Firm down gently and keep moist.
      Seedlings should appear in 7-14 days.
      Thin out seedlings if necessary and keep moist and weed-free.
      Pick and use when needed
      Peas 
      Grow these in the ground of a large pot. You will need to support the plants with netting or bamboo canes and string.
      Plant seeds 5cm apart and cover with 5cm of fine soil. Firm down gently and keep moist. Seedlings should appear within 10-14 days.

      Protect young plants from birds with twigs or netting and remember to support the plants. Keep moist and weed-free. Pick when ready.
      Send us some photos of your vegetable-growing successes!


    • Pollinator Paths Wandsworth – Design Workshops Friday 10th & Saturday 11th March

      Are you looking forward to gardening for wildlife in 2017?
      We recently announced the exciting new Pollinator Paths Wandsworth project, and we’ve been posting updates on Facebook and tweeting.

      The next step is to run the two free Design Workshops this week  One this Friday, one on Saturday. This is where the discussion will take place about what insects the project will aim to benefit, and therefore what plants to recommend to encourage them. And more about plant habitats and microclimates.


      The workshops are not identical – there will be a flow over the two days, and they will also work as stand-alone events. All welcome!

      Once ‘beneficiary bugs’ (actually, probably moths and a bee species) and forage plants are agreed, then the later process of enlisting local people to grow them on and observe can start. Plant distribution will be May 21st in the Tooting Community Garden (and at other local gardens on other weekends). We hope that lots of novice and expert gardeners will to be involved over the summer! 


      Here’s the flyer including info with the Design Workshops at the top:

      Tooting Workshop timings and location:
      2:00 – 5:00 pm on Friday 10th March at Mushkil Aasaan, 222 Upper Tooting Road SW17 7EW

      Wandsworth Workshop timings and location:
      2:00 – 5:00 on Saturday 11th March at Penfold Centre, Neville Gill Close, Wandsworth SW18 4TJ

      And the poster for the whole project:

      We look forward to seeing you at the design workshops – let us know if you are coming by signing up here.  

      All welcome!

    • Celebrating Local Food Together as a Community: Preview of #Foodival2016 on the 10th & 11th Sept

      We’re very excited about TTT’s ninth annual Tooting Foodival which is all about Celebrating Local Food Together as a Community. 
      We’re planning the details now – here’s a snapshot preview.
      Plenty more information to come later on.

      ‘Local food plus local community’ is the weekend’s theme:

      I Grew This! (Foodival 2015)

      Saturday 10th Sept activities run from from 1pm to 5pm and are based at Mushkil Aasaan, 222 Upper Tooting Road SW17 7EW. 

      On Saturday we welcome all local growers to share and donate some of their local produce – maybe a bag of potatoes, or a single chilli pepper…whatever you would like to share.

      Mark where you’ve been growing on our Growing Tooting Map.

      We’ll take your photo proudly holding your fruit or veg for our 2016 I Grew This! poster and we’ll display what’s shared.

      Where will all this wonderful donated local produce go?

      Top Tooting Cook! 
      First, donated produce goes to anyone who wants to enter our fun Top Tooting Cook event. Take some produce or recipes away (or cook with what you have grown at home), and bring back what you make on Sunday for the light-hearted judging and more at Mushkil Aasaan from 4 to 7pm.

      The TTC hat – not the only prize you might win

      Show off your culinary skills using fruit and veg grown locally and you could win a prize… and the coveted title “Top Tooting Cook”!
      Find out all about the competition here and get in touch with Belinda to enter.
      For inspiration, look at these delicious dishes – sorrel soup, risotto with cavolo nero, fava bean toast with egg – cooked by visitors to the Tooting Community Garden, using produce picked that day!

      Thanks Naomi, Charles and Janine.

      Soup Disco!


      Second, local produce donated on Saturday will go to Sunday evening’s Soup Disco party from 7pm to 10pm in Tooting Market, 21-23 Tooting High Street SW17 0SN.

      From 7pm, we will all starting chopping the veg to make our delicious Tooting soups for a shared meal. And throughout this collective cook-up, our top local DJ will be spinning the tunes so you can show off your dance skills as well as your kitchen skills.

      Beginners welcome throughout… fabulous outfits very welcome!
      Plus, some Graveney Gin and Unwined will also be open for business – it’s going to be a memorable night!

      Other activities for all ages on Saturday at Mushkil Aasaan from 1pm to 5pm will include:

      Celebrate reducing waste and having fun by displaying your Ugly Veg. Or as it’s called in the USA: Produce with Personality.

      Learn about urban beekeeping, taste SW12 and SW17 honey and get close to bees. Local beekeeper Richard is bringing a demonstration hive of live bees. He can chat about bees & honey – and about sources of info for planting and gardening to encourage bees and other pollinators.

      Sprouted teff seed

      Practice being a successful home farmer by sprouting seeds – easy and delicious. Fresh seeds sprouted at home only have to travel a few inches ‘from plot to plate’. 
      NO food miles!

      Play our fun low carbon living games including exploring food’s footprint and much more.

      Get hands-on and creative with crafts linked to food and the Soup Disco – all ages can come and enjoy making.

      In the garden…

      Explore the local network of community gardens which can offer you fun, exercise, friendship, time outdoors in nature and a place to grow healthy local food.
      Plus, you will pick up plenty of growing advice and encouragement to grow your own fresh food on window sill, a balcony or in a front garden.

      Discuss the other local sustainability projects that Transition Tooting facilitates with many different partners, find out how to get involved – and we welcome your suggestions and new ideas.

      All welcome to #Foodival2016!

    • Dragon Bean bench in Tooting Community Garden: the grand opening

      Yesterday we officially opened the Dragon Bean bench at the Community Garden Summer Picnic!

      Gentle finishing touches last week

      For the past twelve months Fio Adamson has been guiding a participatory sculpture project in the Community Garden.

      About to cut the ribbon & unveil the bench

      Now, can Fio rest….?

      Working with many pieces of the American Oak felled on the Furzedown Rec, the Furzedown Oak Project was born.
      Over this past year around 80 people of all ages have worked with Fio to imagine, draw, visualise, carry, carve and advise on what’s evolved into the Dragon Bean bench.

      Our Summer Picnic celebrated the Dragon Bean and good company in the Garden: we had delicious food, made popcorn and cooked potatoes on a fire, enjoyed volcano kettle tea, picked brambles, weeded the leeks, painted beautiful signs for the vegetable plots…

      Lots more picnic photos on the Community Garden facebook pages

      We’re so lucky to have the use of the Community Garden land, loaned to us by Tooting charity Mushkil Aasaan. It means we can facilitate community projects like this and our outdoor learning with schools. Plus we can enjoy the Community Garden sessions with anyone who wishes to come, every Sunday.

      We’ve opened the space on over 225 Sundays since 2011.

      Why ‘Dragon Bean’? Come and have a look!
      The sculpture-bench is ready to sit or lie on in the Tooting Community Garden on Sundays from 11:00 to 1:00 at 5 North Drive SW16 1RN.
      We post any updates on our Facebook pages. All welcome!

    • Tooting Community Garden Summer Picnic 7th Aug

      All welcome to join us for an informal and free family picnic on Sunday 7th August from 1- 3 pm at the Community Garden at 5 North Drive SW16 1RN.

      At 2pm we’ll unveil the oak sculpture that many hands have been carving with Fio’s support since June ’15

      Come over from 11am if you would also like to do some gardening!

      The picnic is going to be a simple and enjoyable family get-together, and a time to chat and enjoy the garden. Please bring whatever you wish to eat, plus some to share.

      We’ll provide tea-making with the volcano kettle – and there’s mint, lemon balm and more to sample.
      It would be very helpful if you could bring a mug for tea.

      We’ll prepare a bed of hot charcoal. Try our special long-handled popcorn maker…!

      At 2pm we’ll unveil the oak sculpture 

      No alcohol please, out of respect for Mushkil Aasaan the social charity who lends us the garden land. Thanks for your consideration.

      And no need to RSVP: just come along.

      We’ll post any late picnic notices on the Tooting Community Garden facebook pages.

      See you on Sunday!

    • Outdoor Learning and doing with NCS Challenge

      On Sunday 17th July, Jeni Walker and Richard Couldrey continued with the 4th year of our annual pattern of work with the National Citizen Service through “The Challenge” – a personal development and social integration programme offered to 15 – 17 year olds which includes a project focused day with a Charity or Community Group.

      Emer Clark, our principle contact and Challenge Mentor, reflected that interaction with Transition Town Tooting challenges the participants to step out their comfort zones and enables them to make a contribution to a local community, which is a huge part of the overall aims of NCS Challenge.

      For us, this project chimes loudly with our aim to work with Young People of all ages – from the Reception Class of Gatton Primary to a poster competition with Graveney Secondary School for Foodival last year, to name but 2.

      The 11 participants of this years NCS Challenge with the results of their labours!

      Read on to find out what happened on the day…
      After an introductory session on Saturday 9th July, the 11 participants spent the week doing 2 tasks for Transition Town Tooting to bring back to the Project Day:

      • fundraising for the project day together – understanding the value of the work we do and championing that to raise money for materials and tools needed.
      • pitching for £50 to a Dragon’s Den of experts, again for the project day.
      Both activities are focused on the ideas and application of the Young People involved – if they don’t creatively engage and bring ideas, the project wouldn’t work. Jeni and I continued this theme, giving a palette of options for the project day and asking the participants to “vote” on the preferred options.

      Rubbing down for painting
      Noticeboard decoration!
      Signs from re-use bed slats

      During the project day, we completed…

      • Re-covering the Rainwater Catchment – a necessary bit of maintenance for this Gatton Primary Project of 2013.
      • Sign making and information board design and making – a wonderful addition to the garden for us to better communicate what is growing and the range of projects to visitors new and old.
      • Bottle Greenhouse repairs – another Gatton Primary School project, this time from 2015, that needed a dose of TLC.
      Back to Emer for closing remarks, “The feedback was very positive. On the whole these teams had never been involved in this kind of community project before, but they got involved and by the end they certainly all learnt something new and had a really enjoyable day! It was great to hear the stories about the day-all of them revealing just how stuck in and creative this project allowed the young people to be.”

      Thank you Challengers for your work in all aspects of this part of your programme! Richard and Jeni

    • Growing Tooting finale – the 8th weekend of TTT’s local grow-your-own classes completes the series

      In the final local growing sessions in Balham, Tooting and Wandsworth we celebrated progress and looked at what comes next now the programme is complete. 

      We discussed harvesting and preparing food (and bringing any surpluses to the Tooting Foodival), and asked about what the participants might need next in their growing journey. 
      Suggestions so far: ‘local gardeners’ question time’, a Facebook group, occasional meetings, visiting each others’ growing spaces.

      Plus, local community gardens including Tooting Community Garden and Wendelsworth Community Garden can offer support.

      Exploring the herb bed
      With the Balham group, Rose identified plants and explained how the herb bed at Tooting Community Garden is managed, in particular how foliage is cut and left lying to suppress weeds and help prepare the ground for sowing – and the group raised a glass to celebrate.
      Fresh produce laid out on the Eatwell pie chart
      With the Tooting group, Belinda took us through the new Public Health England Eatwell Guide. The Guide illustrates how to achieve eating a healthy dietary balance of good food – including what we can grow in our gardens.
      Our 8th Growing Tooting Handout is available for all: please click here. To see all 8 handouts, and to read each fortnightly blog post, click on GROWING TOOTING in the quick links above.  
      Hats off to Martin for writing the handouts and facilitating the delivery of Growing Tooting so brilliantly! And to the others who co-facilitated: Eleanor, Belinda, Rose, Jeni and more.

      In summary the Growing Tooting series of 30 local workshops reached 24 people who came to each session, another 24 who came to some of each local series, and another two dozen who are interested for another time.  70+ people are connected in a new way to local growing and each other. 


      There’s an evaluation under way, and we’ll share the results.

      There’s been a second major part of Growing Tooting’s activities. As agreed with the Wandsworth Big Society Fund who gave us financial support for the whole programme, we also supported local gardeners with the development of growing spaces. We’ve been working with six gardens. Please see our blog post from March for more info.

      Two examples include:
      Ravenstone Primary School. The school garden’s layout and access has been improved so children do not get so muddy on wet ground before returning to their next class.
      The school Gardening Club has been encouraged and enthused by Mary, Barbara and Richard.
      The garden has extended its reach to link with the teaching at the school, school events such as the Summer Fair and the parent body and wider community networks.
      Talking of community links, Thomas from Ravenstone pushed a planted-up wheelbarrow in TTT’s #TourdeTooting extravaganza ten days ago.

      CARAS Women’s Drop-in Group. TTT already work with CARAS on TTT’s Rooting in Tooting project. Growing Tooting support helped us work with a new group of CARAS service users, 12 to 18 adult refugee women who attend a weekly class devoted to english language and to participation together exploring new skills. A programme of seven facilitated sessions saw the women planting at their drop-in site, exploring favourite foods and recipes, and learning about sprouting seeds and grains at home. 
      Many thanks to Silvia, Fio, Jane, Lucy, Hilary, Rosalind, Jeni and more who helped to run these classes, and to many friends who donated plants, including Martin, Jane, Deb, Fio, Chuck, and Brockwell Park Community Greenhouses.

      Finally – do get in touch with us at TTT to explore how to start or keep on Growing Tooting (and Balham and Wandsworth). 
      Thanks all for taking part!
      – Chuck 

    • Growing together, Learning together, Working together: three years of Outdoor Learning in Gatton Primary School’s own words

      Early in May we held a delightful celebration of three years’ shared experience of the outdoor learning project between Gatton Primary School and Tooting Community Garden. 
      You can look at that blog report by clicking here. 

      The sun shone on us all and lit the mosaic made at the school with every pupil involved. 
      Among the natural images the tiles spell out the three phrases that are the title of this post.

      What is outdoor learning? ‘OL’ covers many activities (not only gardening) and settings. OL offers opportunities for surprising and diverse impact on participants –not fixed or one-size–fits–all.

      Have a look at this earlier TTT post on outdoor learning with younger children from Gatton School.
      Also, click on OUTDOOR LEARNING in the Quick LInks at the top of this web page for stories from 3 years of the project.

      We want to share Gatton School pupils’ own words about their experience of the project. Young people from Year Six (10 & 11 years old) made confident and touching short speeches at the celebration, and you can read the texts here. 


       All the statements are fascinating, and I’ll quote just parts of what 4 different pupils said:

      • “For over three years now our school has worked as a team to create these projects which you see before you. Team work is necessary in our lives and Gatton School has used this advantage to work as a team and benefit the environment”
      • “We can cultivate land together and learn more social skills when we are engrossed in doing gardening together as either a family or as a community”
      • “Taking part in such activities even improves our Design & Technology skills and encourages children to do something that benefits them as well as having fun doing so. D&T inspires children’s creativity and pushes them to think about important ways to support Mother Nature” 
      •  “Nature plays an important part in every religion and it is everyone’s responsibility to take care of it. We strongly believe that this community garden has brought us together and closer than ever before”


      I asked Rifat Batool, Head of Gatton School, to share some of her vision for establishing and continuing the project. She said:

      “Outdoor and engaging learning is a strong aspect of our work at Gatton School. The various projects carried out in the community garden over the past 3 years have allowed pupils to see first-hand how much we can do together as part of a strong partnership committed to learning. 

      We continually challenge our thinking and way of learning to drive for more innovative ideas to enhance learning even further. This allows pupils to see that so much is possible when using creativity, imagination and sense of purpose. 

      This partnership and celebration represents the coming together of people from different backgrounds and interests  and is an amazing representation of teamwork, collaboration and mutual respect”.

      TTT feels honoured to be part of three years of positive experiment, and grateful for the commitment shown by the children, Gatton School staff, Mushkil Aasaan the owners of the garden site and our own team, rain or shine.

       
      Thank you all, and we’re looking forward to the next three years!
      – Charles