Transition Town Tooting

Category: Community Garden

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

  • A lovely Tooting Community Garden Open Day

    Our Open Day on Sunday 14th June was full of contrasts. A damp and quiet start with a steady trickle of visitors, good conversations and storytelling with Aesop Grimm gathered pace in the afternoon as the sun came out. We cooked delicious treats prepared by the Tooting Field Day group on the charcoal fire, while fanSHEN’s The Apple Cart was performed all around us, with the Furzedown Oak sculpture underway and our plastic bottle greenhouse being raised by many hands (it was great to have tall visitors for some of the key jobs…). 

    By the end of the day all was quiet again, and the morning felt a very long time ago, a different time and place. That’s what is great about the social and growing microclimate of the Community Garden!

    To share our own first reactions, we’ve posted a slide show below. We’ll return to some of the themes of the day again – the garden as a place for nature, to be outdoors, for learning, for creativity, for growing and cooking, and for enjoyable company of all ages. 

    Enjoy the photos and come and visit again or for the first time. We’re open every Sunday between 11:00 and 1:00 for our welcoming sessions at 5 North Drive, SW16 1RN.

    And for the diary, the free July Field Day is on Saturday 12th. Details are here online.

  • Annual Tooting Community Garden Open Day Sunday June 14th 11am – 5pm

    All welcome to our free Garden Open Day!

    There’s plenty to join in with:
    > For the third year running we’re part of the Open Gardens and Squares London-wide weekend.
    > Aesop Grimm is telling intriguing stories.
    > We’re linked in with the local Furzedown Festival, and the Furzedown Oak Community Project will start to shape a sculpture.
    > fanSHEN come to the Garden with the June Tooting Field Day: we’ll be cooking on charcoal, and fanSHEN will perform their show The Apple Cart.

    And: you can simply relax, chat and enjoy the space. 

    Timings and details:  

    For more details on the Field Day arrangements for preparing treats to cook, please click here

    We’ll be posting any late news on the Open Day on our Tooting Community Garden pages on Facebook.
    Any queries? Please email us here

    To download the Open Day poster, please click here.

    Here’s where we are
    Off Tooting Common on the south side at 5 North Drive, SW16 1RN:

    We look forward to seeing you!

  • The Great Greenhouse Build – we need your help!

    Our current outdoor learning project with Gatton School is to build a greenhouse in the community garden made from recycled plastic bottles (see picture below – this is what we hope the finished greenhouse will look like). The year 6 pupils come to the garden for an hour a week to work on this and despite lots of hard work on their behalf, it is slow going. After the Easter holidays, we have just two more lessons (ie two hours!) to finish the project. 
    Clearly this is going to be impossible – currently we have completed two side walls of the greenhouse (below), but we still have the back wall, the front wall with a door, two roof panels and two gable ends to make, and then we have to fit all the pieces together! Plus we have many more plastic bottles to cut.
    So we really need some volunteers to rally round and help out. At the first community session during the Seed Swap we had some great helpers and managed to build a wall of the greenhouse.
    Here’s how you can help:

    Because two more hours with 12x 10-year-olds isn’t going to be enough to finish the build, Sharon will be hosting some working parties in the garden in the Easter school holidays. Please come and help – we REALLY NEED YOU! There are tasks for all abilities so don’t feel you need any particular skills to make a contribution. If you have a hammer or a cordless screwdriver and can bring them along, even better.

    The drop-in sessions will be from 12pm-4.30pm on:
    Good Friday April 3
    Thursday April 9
    Friday April 10

    The Community Garden is at 5 North Drive, SW16 1RN.
    We’re tucked in behind the big red-brick house at that address, with entrance through the black fence to the left of the building. We’ll have a sign on the road.

    Bring your friends, bring your family (there’s even a playground for little kids to occupy themselves). And if you know anyone else who might be interested in helping out, please spread the word. The more the merrier. It really is good fun and hugely satisfying.
    If you would like to come along, or have any questions, please drop us a line at TootingCommunityGarden@gmail.com or the Tooting Community Garden Facebook page so we know how many people to expect.

    Hope to see you at the garden!

  • Bottle Greenhouse action Sunday March 8th, 1100-1300 at Tooting Community Garden

    When you were at school, was your 
    classroom outside in the sun?

    We’re building a plastic bottle greenhouse at the Tooting Community Garden, along with Year Six from Gatton School. 

    That means the children are preparing bottles that would otherwise be added to local waste or recycling. They are measuring the site and problem solving for the construction, all during the weekly outdoor learning sessions.

    The whole school community has been collecting 2 litre clear plastic pop or water bottles (that’s the kind we need) since the autumn…every week, the children come loaded with bags of bottles. We’ll use well over 1000. (Anyone welcome to bring bottles to the garden on any Sunday).

    This weekend, in the normal Sunday Garden session from 1100-1300, all welcome to help us catch up a bit with the repetitive but deeply satisfying task of cutting, washing and piling up (hundreds of) our plastic bottles. Yes it is addictive.
    We’ll have the kit – and if you have a favourite pair of sharp scissors, do bring them along. 
    Not all the jobs involve cutting – there’s something for everyone of all ages.

    Please come along!

    The garden is at 5 North Drive, SW16 1RN. We’ll post any last minute info on both the TTT and the Tooting Community Garden facebook pages. Not to tempt fate…..the weather forecast is good. 

    Bottle greenhouse made by another school

  • Insect Hotel – Project Complete, first invertebrates move in!

    A lot has happened since the insects last blogged: 3 sessions with Gatton Primary, Christmas, New Year and most all of January! High time we caught you up.

    The last 3 sessions with the school where filled with habitat creation. Each week we looked back at the 15 minute “mini-hotels” during the first 4 sessions and were delighted to find lots of tenants. Wood lice, worms, centipedes and millipedes had moved in to the nooks and crannies.

    On Tuesday January 20th, we convened a celebration with 7 student reps and 2 VIPs… our local Councillor from Wandsworth Council, Candida Jones and Chris Young from RHS Campaign for School Gardening. TTT contributors to the project also came along, as did teachers from Gatton School. We’re delighted you could all come, thank you for sparing the time.

    The Insect Hotel is named! The 7 Student Reps with Rifat Batool, Headteacher and Chris Young, RHS  Regional Campaign for School Gardening Advisor, London.

    Read on to read the words of the Student Reps, what was their experience?

    After a brief welcome, it was over to the students to tell us about the experience form their point of view before the official naming of… wait for it… “Bugs’R’Us” Insect Hotel! Here’s excerpts of what the 7 children said:

    “The project that we have been working on (The Insect Hotel) has helped us develop a sense of responsibility as well as a variety of hands on skills like sawing, drilling, construction and of course our weekly search for the “bugs” that have taken shelter in our mini hotels.”

    Of the mini-hotels, the children said…
    “…it was always interesting to come back the next week to see what creatures were visiting and which “rooms” they preferred. Darker, gloomier and smaller seems to be the attraction.”

    “We were amazed to discover the hidden crevices that bugs seem to enjoy visiting when we created our mini hotels, to get an idea of the habitats of different creatures in the garden.”

    And of being in a natural environment – not an everyday experience in our urban setting…

    “We were quite amazed with ourselves to know that we could actually hold a worm in our hands and not run for cover.”

    And of the experience as a whole…
    “We have learned the importance of being eco-friendly, recycling our waste and the amazing role that “bugs” play in our environment.”

    “Overall, we had a wonderful and memorable experience and hope we come back here to contribute towards another project very soon.”

    Over the next weeks and months we’ll gently add habitat to the Hotel and label up the different niches we have created. We’re also starting a conversation about how to share learning about the project. Should you want to hear our experience in more detail – do email transitiontowntooting@gmail.com.

    A big thank you to Naseem Aboobaker and all at Mushkil Aasaan, the local charity who own the site and continue to encourage us to garden and teach at Tooting Community Garden.

    And thank you to Ms Syeda and Ms Shazia at Gatton School for leading the Eco-Schools project and checking permissions for photos for this blog week in week out!

    And the teachers and teaching assistants from Gatton School, Mr.Amin, Ms.Fathima, Ms.Neelam for your engagement at the garden and parallel work in the classroom – the students were really well prepared!

    And finally, a big THANK YOU to all the volunteers from Transition Town Tooting who contributed their time, energy and application to the project.

  • Birds, stories, a volcano, willows: a winter day in the Community Garden, Sunday 25th January

    All welcome to join us for a winter day this weekend in the 
    Tooting Community Garden at 5 North Drive, SW16 1RN

    Brave the cold outside, 
    and swap screen time for wild time
    1030-1130

    Shhhhh…take part in the RSPB Garden Birdwatch

    1145

    Bird-themed storytelling with Emily Duizend

    1200

    Tea making with the volcano kettle

    1230-1330

    Get active adding willow to our living willow yurt  

    >Come for any part or all of the day
    >For all ages 5-105
    >All materials provided
    >The activity area is wheelchair accessible
    >Nearest toilet to the garden is at Tooting Athletics Track
    >To see the poster: click here 

    >Updates: Tooting Community Garden or Transition Town Tooting on Facebook
    >Many thanks to Emily Duizend: www.storyisland.net


    We started the willow yurt 3 years ago
    Any queries, please comment on Facebook or email us here

  • Insect Hotel – trash to treasure (of sorts…)

    Have you ever thought about how much material gets used once and thrown away? Or is not financially worth re-using? Or how most people won’t be satisfied buying something second hand, it has to be new?

    Somewhat in tune with Transition Network’s December theme of “Less is More”  I thought it would be of interest to look at the materials we are using in the Insect Hotel build.

    The structure is supported on waste flag stones donated to the garden. The four uprights used to be fence that ran across the garden and was blown down in the gales a year or two ago, the horizontal shelf supports too. Those bracing pieces are temporary…

    Week 5 – all we need now is the habitats… and the bugs!

    Click below to read how the roof was put together…

    This week, the students from Gatton raised the roof, along with David, Sharon, Esther and I. The roof is made of amazing 4b2 timber – this particular stuff came out of our loft when we were lucky enough to convert it a year ago. The booming domestic renovation business is not set up at all to re-use or recycle. Time and money rule, and its cheaper to dump these timbers in a skip than de-nail and re-use – criminal if you ask me, imagine a waterfall system of being passed onto smaller and smaller projects, but that’s another idea for another blog. The tiles too came from our job.

    Detail showing roof structure and re-use timber and tile

    If you need any of these materials, just go for a bike ride and find a house wrapped in scaffolding and ask the builders. Chances are, they’d be more than happy to offload it too you (you might need a bigger vehicle than a bike to transport it!) as it reduces their waste costs and so increases their profit as this is already figured into a fixed price to the client.

    The only thing new so far on the build is the tile batons – I couldn’t find any re-use ones, unfortunately. However, when I went to buy them, I found out my local timber merchant has stacks and stacks of pallets, considered an inconvenient waste and were kind enough to drop 5 of them round to the garden – that’s the rest of the shelving material sorted! The simplest Insect Hotels are made from skips, so if you’re looking to do one… check out here for pallet-based inspiration.

    And here for a previous blogpost on innovation in building waste re-use.

  • Insect Hotel: Looking back, looking forward – re-using all the way

    It’s been 4 1/2 weeks since we started the Insect Hotel build. In the Tuesday sessions with Gatton Primary, we have welcomed 40 students to the garden. We have shown them flint tools found at the site from thousands of years ago, the growing beds created only a few years ago and the Rainwater Catchment constructed with last years Year 6 group.  We’ve asked “why an insect hotel?” , measured and cut the structure of the Insect Hotel and made 4 experimental habitats. Not to mention handled a number of the mini beasts who might take up residence – to great hilarity.

    So far, the Insect Hotel is 100% made from re-used materials – timber from a fallen fence, paving slabs discarded as extras. We’ll continue to endeavour to do this, trying to reduce waste and show what is possible, with a little effort and energy.

    We’ve seen how TTT volunteers are essential to any projects success and
    prove how together we can go further.

    Watch this space – this week will see the roof going on – topping out! A big moment in any construction project. Following that – we pack it full of enticing habitat and wait for the guests to arrive…

  • Insect Hotel Wk3 – The Rising!

    Often with our work with Gatton, we’ll augment the sessions with the students with extra hours to maintain momentum as well as keep us on track. These augmenting sessions usually happen during normal garden hours on a Sunday, 11am to 1pm. So come down if you specifically want to contribute to this project. Send a message via transitiontowntooting@gmail.com

    Week 3 saw the Insect Hotel rise-up from raw timbers to an upright structure – a great moment. Luckily, we had a couple of load testers to immediately make sure it was suitable for grubs to climb up!

    1. Preparing the ground  
    2. Building the frames
    The timbers used were the
    ones Gatton School had
    cut in preceding weeks
    3. Laying flag stone foundations

    4. There she rises! With two eager 
    climbers waiting in the wings

    5. Bang on level…

    The timbers used to be a fence that passed across the site – a  priority for us is to re-use as much as possible.

    The team on the day was Diana (with the level), Gerard (with the sideburns) Benji with the yellow coat and Dominic with the smile! Jenny is on the camera and that’s me in the hat!

    6. Here come the load testers

    Click below to read about how Gatton continued the build…

    7. Shelf building

     The following Tuesday, Gatton returned and the  students cracked on with making the shelves  that will go into the structure. 

     For us, having these two sides to a project is  very interesting and valuable. The sense of  teamwork is palpable. With the three Year 6  projects of the Rainwater Catchment, the Cold  Frame and now the Insect Hotel, we really do  achieve more than we could on our own through  sharing the project.
    8. What do you think??
    Meanwhile, our experiments with insect habitats continued. This week, we looked at habitats for the solitary bee, as well as other critters. Using an old oversized drainpipe, we cut up some old bamboo and stuffed it full. The solitary bees crawl in there and make a nest for their young, stacked along the tubes – pretty cool and very easy to make… they like a sunny, warm, dry spot – which they’ll get in the final hotel.
    A first home
    Meanwhile, for the solitary bees…

  • 100 children in the Garden: hunting for minibeasts and for bears in mid-November

    In the past fortnight we have hosted two year groups of 50 children each with staff and parents from Gatton School for two special mid-November outdoor learning sessions, Tooting style.

    Year Four actively searched the garden’s diverse habitats for minibeasts as part of a curriculum day on the natural world. They found worms, woodlice, centipedes, snails, spiders, beetles, and more.

    Year One went step-by-step through an active version of We’re Going on a Bear Hunt – a super experience of literacy, creativity and using their imaginations outdoors.

    What did Year 4 do?

    They dug energetically
    They peered under the roof

    Clipboards came out with the sun
    They inspected everything

    Year One’s Bear Hunt was thrilling…..
    …click below to read on

    50 Year 1 childen singing ‘We’re not scared..’ was great to hear. The children walked through the Long Grass, they crossed the Deep River, they dragged themselves through the Mud, they went through the Forest, they battled the Snowstorm…

    Crossing the Deep Cold River

    Battling the snowstorm

    Through the Forest


     
    …and they found the Cave. 

    In the Cave….was the BEAR!


    Was the bear real? Some children thought the best thing to do was to hug the bear..and others ran back to the Forest.

    How did the visit end? 
    With more songs, and with snacks of carrots and pears – and all the cores went straight into the compost. Nothing left but footprints and good memories.

    It was a privilege to host both year groups in the Community Garden, and to see the children being so adventurous, responsive and positive, and the sessions so creatively prepared.
    And if you don’t know the story, click here to see Michael Rosen performing his poem..and try it out yourself.