Growing Community across London - Part 2

Our previous blog post describes Growing Community Part 1 - and to recap in the last week of July our long-planned collaboration between Ravenstone School and Tooting Community Garden offered two interlinked local 'Growing Community in the Heart of the City' workshops as part of The Mayor of London's National Park City Festival

The common green thread running through both events was celebrating city growing and the outdoors, creating an environment which is good for ourselves, for the community and for nature.




Blog post Part 1 describes the Ravenstone School event on July 22.
Here we're sharing what we did together in the second of the two events, the Tooting Community Garden open day on July 28th.

The garden team of a dozen volunteers met early (no Sunday lie-ins) to put up signs, hang our TTT bunting, set up activities and then provide a warm welcome and an invitation to join in the day in any way people wished. We wanted to demonstrate that being outdoors together is accessible and enjoyable.

Over 80 people came along on a Sunday with an on-off forecast for rain. We decided to not put up gazebos, and we were all rewarded with a lovely afternoon.

The welcome table gave a focus for saying hello and having a chance to talk with visitors who either explored the garden, relaxed or joined one of our fun and practical activity workshops:

1. Creating vertical wall planters with Paul: sharing environmental, DIY, creativity and urban growing benefits.














2. Being guided by Sharon to select plants and re-purposed containers to take home - building growing skills and wellbeing.

3. Joining Jane's 'Drawn to Nature' drawing workshop: enjoying taking time to observe and be present, with wellbeing and drawing practice benefits.

4. Annie's creative workshops in the family zone: sharing benefits of creating together in unusual ways across generations or with people new to you and learning fun techniques to take home.

Feedback from visitors included:
'A lovely place, and lovely people' 'A lovely celebration of nature and community spirit' 'The day was beautiful, well thought-out and sustainable' 'A nice peaceful day and a great community feel' 'Loved the community feeling and how positive and welcoming everyone has been' 'What a lovely garden, and such friendly people. We'll be back'

Our own responses to the day?
It was very affirming for the Community Garden team to welcome so many people who enjoyed what we offered together. Sundays in the Garden are fun and informal, and it was a good challenge to do something different, facilitating an engaging and outward-looking day.
Plus, it was our 8th birthday as a garden project since being generously offered use of the land by Naseem Aboobaker.  

Many volunteers have opened the Garden space on over 400 Sundays. 

That's worth celebrating!

Thanks to all the volunteers: Amanda, Annie, Chuck, Deb, Jane, Kay, Keith, Paul, Ryan, Sharon & Tom. A big shout out to our new friends and qualified first aiders Alice & Charlie who joined us on the day to provide that cover - thankfully they had no cause to leap into action. Kudos to photographer Bryony Williams for images used here (plus more for another time) and to Kay and Chuck for other pictures in this blog.

Everyone is welcome to join us at the Community Garden every Sunday from 11:00 to 1:00 (sometimes later into the afternoon). No experience necessary and we share any updates or changes on our Tooting Community Garden Facebook and Instagram pages.

The annual Tooting Foodival - our twelfth! - is TTT's next big community event! It's taking place on Saturday 14th September and we hope to see you there - it's going to be great!

Growing Community in the Heart of the City: two linked local events offered as part of The Mayor of London's National Park City Festival

'Growing Communities in the Heart of the City' is this weekend in the Tooting Community Garden!
We'll be running our free open day on Sunday 28th July from 12:00-4:00 to celebrate the National Park City Festival and also our 8th birthday (we've opened the garden on around 400 Sundays!)

 












What will we be doing on Sunday?

• Welcoming everyone to come along and enjoy the space - no need to book.
• Bring a picnic, and we'll provide activities, green space, shade and plenty of cool water!
• We're offering a particular welcome to families with young children or babies - come and have some outdoor time in a safe and welcoming place.
• We'll have a range of fun garden-themed activities for families and young children.
• We're also offering three timed workshops, just drop in:
  • 12:30 - 1:30, learn about making vertical wall planters so you can garden anywhere with very little space
  • 1:00 - 2:00, learn about selecting and taking care of plants, and choose some to pot up and take home
  • 2:30 - 3:30, be 'Drawn to Nature' and join our plant life drawing workshop for adults and teenager
• Of course you can simply come along and enjoy being in the garden - so do bring a blanket to sit on and a picnic.

All welcome!

You can follow Tooting Community Garden on Facebook and Instagram - join us!

 

We're celebrating city growing and the outdoors, creating an environment which is good for ourselves, for the community and for nature.

We also facilitate other community programmes in the Community Garden. 
For six years we have run outdoor learning with Gatton School and garden and wellbeing activities with the beneficiaries at CARAS the Tooting charity working with asylum-seekers and refugees.  

We're proud to be able to offer to share the space with everyone locally and also very grateful to Naseem Aboobaker of Mushkil Aasaan for the free use of her land to create this community garden during these years.

30 Days Wild in Wandsworth - get ready to enjoy the local outdoors for the month of June

30 Days Wild In Wandsworth is aimed at encouraging us all to share enjoying being outdoors in the city during June '17. 
Being outdoors is not one size fits all: read a book under a tree, walk to work, make a daisy chain, join in activities like the Park Run or swim at the Lido.

We're piggybacking on The Wildlife Trusts' national '30 Days Wild' campaign, a great place to start.
Go to their site online here to join as an individual or family to receive the 30 Days Wild June Calendar.

There's a link here for the beautiful ideas in Random Acts of Wildness. 

And there's a free 30 Days Wild app - get it here.

Two of us are helping frame this month of focus on the outdoors: Chuck from Transition Town Tooting and Rosie from Paradise Co-op.

Rewilding in Tooting - a new storytelling event to explore environmental thinking with children

Children from 5 to 8 years old and accompanying adults are welcome to join this new event which explores rewilding and environmental thinking in a fascinating and participative way - right here in Tooting on Saturday 8th April.

All welcome to come and explore our themes:

Play - Learn - Dream 

We're thrilled that Andres Restrepo and Emily Duizend are running this imaginative free event based in the Tooting Community Garden.

 

We hope you're intrigued and want to join us on the first weekend of the Easter holidays. Adults welcome if accompanying children, and together we'll be look at nature, use our senses and imaginations, focus on what's special about our surroundings, appreciate Tooting as a place - all from angles that may be new to us.

When? Saturday 8th April, from 11:00 to 1:00. And it's free

Where? Tooting Community Garden, 5 North Drive SW16 1RN

For who? Children aged 5 to 8 years old

Details? Children need to be accompanied by an adult

Flyer? Click here for a copy of the flyer

How to book? Contact Andres by email to book and for more details

We want to inspire children and adults to 

explore how the outdoors can be experienced right here in the city

All welcome on Saturday 8th April - please book in and we'll see you there!

Snapshots from the CARAS Open Day in Tooting

TTT is looking forward to our new partnership project with CARAS and the RHS 'Greening Grey Britain' campaign (see our 18th Aug post below). To help launch 'Rooting in Tooting', we joined in at the CARAS Open Day at All Saints' Church, Tooting. 
It was a very welcoming day for the extended CARAS family, where many people knew each other and came to chat in the sun (or find some shade), or play outdoors. 
We had a brilliant lunch made by The Chickpea Sisters (who'll be at the Tooting Foodival on Sun 13th Sept). There was music, dancing...& some diverse growing action.

Chris was flat out sowing seeds and playing with mud:
 

Chris plus seed sowers

Making mud seed bombs

 

Threshing and winnowing wheat grown in the Tooting Community Garden: we took the heads of wheat and did the steps used round the world for thousands of years (and which are still in our language even if we've never seen it happen). 
So, Seamus found helpers for threshing to separate the wheat grains from the heads, and then winnowing the resulting mix to remove the chaff:

Bashing bags on the ground...

...or jumping up and down on them

Then, with the right puff, the chaff blows away

Flicking up the chaff to catch the wind: experts!

We also gathered great ideas in several languages for what to consider growing in the project: for food, for health, for beauty, and for nature:

Thanks to all (of all ages) at the open day for getting so involved! 
Plus, we're grateful to Chris and Sophie from the RHS, and to Seamus, Jenny and Chuck from TTT, and all at CARAS. More news as 'Rooting in Tooting' develops.

Shelter - the theme for our 5th Tooting Field Day

On Sunday August 2nd we focused on Shelter.  
Each family Field Day safari has a theme that's about enjoying the local outdoors, creativity and also low-carbon living. We've explored Travel, Water, Nature and more...and had a lot of fun together, and discovered parts of Tooting we didn't know at all.

What did we do?
In the first part of the afternoon we met at Sprout Community Arts and made insect hotels out of re-purposed plastic bottles and cardboard (yes, packaging from Dan's kitchen furniture). 

These shelters are designed for ladybirds and lacewing flies - both are welcome predators on aphids. The results were fantastic!  Brilliantly decorated, with ideas zipping around the tables as children and adults thought of new techniques, and showed them off, and copied. Lucky bugs...we made over 3 dozen shelters.

The second part of the Field Day continued the theme. 
We walked to Tooting Graveney Common and built shelters and dens from willow branches (kindly donated by Lambeth Council).  Again, the creativity and healthy competitiveness that everyone displayed was inspiring. People also commented how much fun it was to hang out and play in the woods. 

After a picnic (courtesy of Pooja, Arena and The Collective Dairy) certificates were awarded to the best dens in different categories by our young judges Dominic and Benji.
At the end we followed the 'leave no trace principle', dismantling all the dens (after we’d taken photos to remember them by!).

But what's this on Airbnb? 

One of the bottle shelters may have been left behind!

It sleeps 16...and has 8 bathrooms...look it up and check out the spec.

And look out for other Shelter-themed surprises you may find in Furzedown and Tooting - let us know what you spot. Including any sleeping ladybirds

Thanks very much to all the helpers who prepared and led this wonderful day, and to participants for your energy!


The last Field Day is on September 13th, part of the Tooting Foodival. There's going to be a giant pea ... all the info is available online here. All welcome, all ages, and it's free.

Sunday Aug 2nd: Make a day of it with the Community Garden and Tooting Field Day

All welcome to make a FREE day of it together this Sunday - with an outdoor focus:

Tooting Community Garden will be open to all from 11:00 to 1:00
There's lots to do, from sowing autumn crops to sculpting our bramble bushes (there's going to be a lot of fruit for the Tooting Foodival on 12 & 13 September (click on FOODIVAL in the Quick Links above for info).

Tooting Field Day starts at Sprout Community Arts at 1:30 and runs until 5:00
The theme of this month's Field Day is 'Shelter'. 
We'll start off in Sprout making recycled-bottle insect hotels to take home, in this case specifically for ladybirds and lacewings (both these families of bugs eat lots of garden pests, particularly aphids).



Then we'll move outdoors to practice making some family-size 'human' shelters out of natural materials. 
Can't take these home, but we can imagine....
All the details here: http://www.fanshen.org.uk/current/tooting-field-days.html

Tooting Field Days - Free Family fun - Starting Sunday 19 April

Tooting Field Days are local safaris based in and around Tooting; a chance to get outside and play, walk or make something. We can't promise lions and zebras but you might discover something you've never seen before, think something new or have a mini adventure!

Tooting Field Days will happen every month on a Sunday afternoon from April until September. The first Field Day is Sunday 19 April.

The theme for the April Field Day is "Natural Neighbours." Make a pine cone bird feeder, discover voices of Tooting past and do scavenger hunts in Streatham Cemetry. Drop in for part of the day or join us for the whole event.

2pm: Meet at Tooting Library (75 Mitcham Road, SW17 9PD) to make a pine cone bird feeder that you can hang in your garden or balcony to encourage more feathered friends to visit you. Materials provided.

3pm: Depart Tooting Library to do Tootingwalks 1, a specially-made audio walk packed full of music and the voices of local people, talking about Tooting past and present and Tooting’s love of food. MP3 players and maps provided.

3.45 - 5.30: Treasure Trails, Scavenger Hunts and honey tasting in Streatham Cemetery (enter through gate on Broadwater Road).

You can join us for the whole afternoon or drop in for just one section.

All activities are suitable (and fun) for children and adults.

Tooting Field Day is a collaboration between Transition Town Tooting and local arts organisation fanSHEN.

To book a (free) place or for more information, click here

It was a Wild Afternoon in Tooting, and worth it

The games:
A beautiful sunny Tooting morning.....,
.....and guess what time the really cold rain started yesterday? 

Yes, exactly as we started the games. 

Nevertheless, adults were seen and heard up trees, and a 2-year old was soon playing hug-tag (come next time to find out how to play that game..). That brave family deserves our respect!

There will be a next time, with the monthly Tooting Field Days starting on Sunday April 19th - we will share all the details soon. 
Many thanks to Rachel and Dan from fanSHEN Theatre...brrrr.

The Project Wild Thing film:
It was great to see this - the film covers many current opportunities and challenges in getting us all outdoors more, through the storyline of our hero having a few months to become 'Marketing Manager for Nature'. Why? What's the product? What are young people's perceptions? Who wants to be involved? Who can advise and help? The result became the 'Project Wild Thing' group, with good resources for all here.

Meeting local groups: 
A nice extra outcome of the afternoon was meeting Anthony & Kirsty, trustees from The Woodfield Project. The project is restoring a building, and making new relationships, and offering new outdoor-oriented courses right by Tooting Common.
It's really valuable for TTT to meet local allies, so we can work together on these important objectives which are good for Tooting people and the whole neighbourhood.

Courses are being developed with Fabiola from Groundwork London.
She gave us a hand-made poster of some of the local events being offered in April and May.

We'll put it up at the Community Garden, Fabiola. Really great topics, and we'll keep in close touch and promote these events.
For more detailed information, contact her here. 

Thanks again to the supporters for this event: The Wandsworth Council Eco-Fund, Mushkil Aasaan, and the Friends of Streatham Cemetery.

WHY A Wild Afternoon in Tooting? Part 3

We've had two posts about WHY? we're offering this urban 'Wild Afternoon' on Sunday (details in Events Calendar opposite).
The first post was about making the commitment to get outside more - and enjoying the benefits of chance discovery here in Tooting. 
The second post looked at some of the ways young people can take part in the outdoors - including examples of structured programmes. This post looks at connecting the outdoors to health & wellbeing.

We'll see the Project Wild Thing film on Sunday at 4pm. Another of their projects is developing information for maternity units, to help staff and mothers explore the value of being outdoors from week one: 

Looking at all age groups, there's a well-researched family of actions to promote wellbeing.  The 'Five Ways to Wellbeing' is a practical shortlist: Connect, Be Active, Take Notice, Keep Learning and Give. 
These activities are simple things we can do in our everyday lives.
The '5 Ways..' were developed from evidence gathered in the UK government’s Foresight Project on Mental Capital and Wellbeing and published in 2008 by the New Economics Foundation.

For example: In the second WHY? blog post we saw the young people from The Challenge group connecting with nature in a way that was new to them as they dug for potatoes; they were certainly being active, taking notice, and inquisitive about flowers and seed sowing. Yes they were learning and giving. Actions to benefit our wellbeing are simple and accessible, and outdoor opportunities are all around us.

Here's a great example from the National Wildflower Centre which summarises the '5 Ways' as outdoor actions, and on a 'loyalty card':

 
Brilliant, I wish I'd thought of this!
It's very neat method for reinforcing these positive actions. It makes me want to borrow this idea for the outdoor learning activities we do with Gatton School...there's a lot to explore on just one small card.

Come along on Sunday 22nd for a top-up of your natural 5-a-day.

Finally: the Project Wild Thing film talks about how to 'present' nature to people who have lost the habit or fluency of getting into the outdoors. 
Does nature need a local marketing campaign?
TTT, fanSHEN Theatre, the Tooting Community Garden, the Friends of Streatham Cemetery and other partners will all help with that locally. Please join us. - Charles

WHY 'A Wild Afternoon in Tooting'? Part 2

This is the second in our mini-series of 3 blogs about 'why' experiencing the urban outdoors can be valuable and significant for many people....something we'll enjoy on Sunday (see the events listing opposite) in an informal way, based on fun and games.

This blog is just a snapshot of a big subject, looking at another way for young people to experience the outdoors: participating in structured or formal programmes aimed at a very wide range of needs and using many methods. 

One formal programme that happens right here in Wandsworth is The Challenge National Citizenship Scheme for 15-17 year olds. Read all about it at http://www.ncsthechallenge.org/ 
There is still time to sign up for 2015!
Tooting Community Garden has been involved with The Challenge for the past two years, providing practical experience of a community project, in our case in the outdoors.

The 2013 group tackled our bread wheat - threshing, sifting and then grinding into flour to be baked into Foodival sourdough. It was an active day full of energy!

The 2014 group had a damp day moving from "Am I expected to actually touch this earth..?" to "Wow, digging potatoes is like finding buried treasure" and putting their photos on Instagram.

WHY we're offering our 'Wild Afternoon in Tooting' this Sunday 22nd Feb: Part 1

All welcome to the two parts of our free half term Wild Afternoon in Tooting:
at 1400: participative outdoor games for all the family
at 1600: showing 'Project Wild Thing' film  

All the details on our events calendar to the right of this blog page.
It's going to be a fun and engaging afternoon, even if it's damp outdoors in the first part when we try out some games.
  
Being outdoors in the city should be fun, available and accessible, and is valuable for us all. 

For the next 3 days, we want to illustrate some different aspects of why we believe it's important to offer ways to enjoy being outdoors - including the personal and informal as well as more formal examples.

Why go outdoors in Tooting? Part 1 
Rachel from fanSHEN Theatre will be helping run the games this Sunday. fanSHEN are also developing a 6-month series of free Tooting Field Days, which kick off in April in partnership with TTT.

"As a warm-up to the Tooting Field Days, we’ll be helping out at Wild Afternoon, playing some games invented by the awesome San Francisco New Games Foundation. 

Why? In August last year, our fanSHEN team spent almost every Saturday walking around Tooting, looking for good routes for the audio walks we were making. We had some ideas about what the routes might be, landmarks they might take in, how long they might take - but mostly we walked around to see where might be fun or interesting. 

 When we got tired, we stopped at one of Tooting’s brilliant restaurants or cafes and refueled on egg kothu or samosas or 

coffee while we pored over a map to see where we hadn’t tried yet. 

We stumbled on places and met people 

we wouldn’t normally. 

Maybe because it was August and 

everyone else was away, it felt a bit like a holiday, exploring a place without the pressure of needing to be in a 

certain place at a particular time.

A Wild Afternoon in Tooting 22nd Feb

The film is a passionate and witty exploration about how to enable young people (and the adults who may not be sure how to help make this happen) to get outdoors - and swap screen time for wild time. More information on the Project Wild Thing website.

Booking: Come for the whole afternoon, or for either of the two parts. So we can make plans for numbers of participants, please book in for free here. Or of course drop in on the day.

More details on Project Dirt.

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?

Number 6 in TTT's '12 tweets to Christmas'

Here is tweet number six:
No.6 in @tttooting 12 tweets to Xmas. Swap screen time for #wildtime Ideas: @wearewildthing @wildlifetrusts @LoveOutdoorPlay @outdoor_nation

Plus a bonus photograph for the blog only:
Have a look at the Christmas stamp - obviously it's showing Tooting, Furzedown or Fishponds...so that's more encouragement to get outdoors! See you there.

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...

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...