Six gardens to inspire us

TTT people have made six fascinating garden visits (well five visits to new gardens, and our garden seems fresh every day). We want to share our impressions of things that excited us in many settings, from diverse and creative points of view, all of which can inspire our growing in Tooting.

Yes we are only showing snapshots - on another day, and for another visitor, there'd be a different experience.

Two gardens are in New York, in Manhattan's Alphabet City - where guerilla gardening began in the early 1970s in a bid to develop community ties and reduce unsafe areas. It wasn't set up by politicians, but by individuals mobilising together.

 

Which is your favourite garden; what inspires you to grow?

Share a comment below this post...

 

First, the Tooting Community Garden. We have been sowing beans, corn, and more beans - one of our contributions for Growing for the 2014 Foodival. Come and see them at our Garden Open Day, from 1000-1700 on Sunday 15th June, when we're open as part of Open Garden Squares and the Furzedown Festival.

https://www.facebook.com/tootingcommunitygarden

http://www.tootingfoodival.blogspot.co.uk/

 

Bursting out on 21st May

Sowing on 5th May

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Second, El Jardin del Paraiso in New York City.  Home to the most fantastic tree house (or should I say tree nest) I've ever seen. It was great to see so many children enjoying the space and hear music being played (much like our garden every Sunday).

The tree nest was the result of a partnership with local artists, and

reminded me of the Furzedown Oak project that we're part of in Tooting. It really brought to life how art can inspire people's connection with the natural environment around them and help their enjoyment of that space. http://evpcnyc.org/eljardin/

Third, Chelsea Physic Garden.

A paradise since 1673 for lovers of plants and botanical history, right on the Thames near the Royal Hospital (and the Chelsea Flower Show right now). It is very welcoming, and in beautiful condition, with the wow factor of expert planting and interpretation.

http://chelseaphysicgarden.co.uk/

I love the 'Shelf Life' project tucked away in the teaching area: growing common shop and supermarket foods in their sales packaging: from aloe vera to guava to wheat.

Fourth, Rosendale Allotments in Dulwich. Founded in 1908, the allotment assocation has 480 plots (and a long waiting list). The site lies on a steep hill, and every kind of crop is grown around the gardeners' benches and sheds - some for relaxing to enjoy the view towards Canary Wharf and The Shard. Thanks to the Site Officers Marco and Sophia!

The website is full of good growing guidance http://www.rosendale-allotments.org.uk/

 

Fifth, Sissinghurst Castle, in Kent.  There's the stunning National Trust garden (really, there were no weeds in the beds), and also a new kitchen garden to reduce the 'food miles' of the fresh food used in the two cafes. There are two full time kitchen gardeners - yes we are envious!http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/sissinghurst-castle/

 

 

Sixth, it has to be the 6th Street and Avenue B Garden in New York City.

What struck me about this garden was the beauty and variety of the space - it was full to bursting with flowers and plants, grouped closely together. The joy was the exploration along tiny paths and under canopies - each revealing another space - a pond with fish, plentiful raised beds for herbs, wild flowers, ferns and vegetables, a stage for community events, shady secret seating areas for tranquility and reflection, and much more besides.

I discovered that this site is so loved by the community that it is now permanent, and welcomes 200 children through its doors every week as part of an education program that has gone from strength to strength. Truly inspirational.
http://www.6bgarden.org/history.htm

   

And:

As well as coming to garden with us in the Tooting Community Garden any Sunday, another great activity is the wonderful and creative Chelsea Fringe, running now until 8th June.  

http://www.chelseafringe.com/

 

 

Our 8th 'Carbon Conversations' series has begun

We began last evening...........our small group's exploration of understanding, choices and action on carbon reduction.
The participants aren't all starting from the same place on this journey. Some people in the group know a lot, some know less, and for all of us terms like a low-carbon future or carbon footprint may be simple words, but what do they mean?
Yes, we've promised to be careful of jargon.
However there is no getting away from the fact that it's useful to become more 'carbon literate', and engage with some new terminology, and some measurement ('where are all those tonnes of C02?') -without becoming carbon bores or confusing people.

Sketch of an earlier carbon conversation, by Alice Maggs

 

We asked ourselves the question: why do we bother? to act on sustainability and carbon-reduction in our lives.
Here are our responses, and no one needed to mention carbon at all in these personal and passionate comments:

• I feel more powerful and in control, rather than helpless
• It's a crime not to
• I wish to look after the world
• I hate waste and with my 'cheapskate tendencies' I love to recycle
• I care about the future, and my children's lives
• I believe doing positive things makes more positive things happen
• We are all at risk - people, countries, nature
• This is a global challenge, and I want to know what I can do

These comments show a range - maybe some are from the head and are about understanding and facts; maybe some are gut feelings from the heart; some are about taking action that's hands-on.
We have a creative mix in the group for this series!

This session was designed to frame the whole series, and the next meetings are focused on separate practical topics. The second meeting is Tuesday 27th May, and you can still join the rest of the series then.
For more info, click here for the flyer.

Painting of the Wandle Valley Girls - Tonight at Sprout

Come and see how easy it is to paint things in a totally artistic way!

We are creating a community of papier mache ladies for the Deen City Farm exhibition as part of the Chelsea Fringe Festival. Last month we created the structures and at this evening's Meet & Make its time to get the paints out!

Here are some finished ones to give us some inspiration..

We are working together on this project so come along even if you didn't make a head last month I am so sure you will have a great time reconnecting with your creative self!

Meet & Make 

6:60 - 8:30 ish

Sprout Community Arts Space

74 Moyser Road

Furzedown

SW16 6SQ.

brought to you by S.M.Ar.T network of  T.T.T.
call or email Jeni on 07944693015 and jeniannewalker@gmail.com.

Join us for Carbon Conversations 19 May to 7 July

All welcome to our eighth series of Tooting Carbon Conversations.
We have a group formed now to start on 19th May, with a couple of places left - please do join in for a free, instructive, practical and non-judgemental tour around reducing your own carbon footprint.

Click here for the flyer with all the details. And click on CARBON CONVERSATIONS at the top of this blog page to read past TTT posts.
To sign up or chat, email Charles at transitiontowntooting@gmail.com - but don't leave it too late!

And we have a fascinating new offer:
Our Transition Town Tooting colleague Jenny is developing the idea for Carbon Collaborations - an informal space, online and face to face in other meetings and workshops.
Carbon Collaborations can encourage people to share their own successes and challenges in understanding and managing their own journey with carbon reduction in home energy, travel, food, consumption, and more.
We'll share What does that look and feel like?
That could be expressed through wishlists, diaries, sharing equipment or time, confessions, pleas for help if stuck, photos of achievements... 
We'll get into this at the end of this next Carbon Conversations series.

AGM Report

The 2014 AGM and 6th birthday party took place last Tuesday.  There was a Tooting related quiz and the usual AGM formalities of re-electing co-chairs and presenting accounts before a brief update on projects past present and future. 

While we look forward to big events like the Foodival, three exciting new ideas include a drive to promote products "Made in Tooting", Carbon Collaborations to add to Conversations and an autumn Looking Out For Tooting event finding alternative viewpoints of our beloved urban nexus.  Keep a look out for more on these on this blog and social media.

Meanwhile today there's a well being walk (Sir Owain and the Lady of the Well) ending on the Common where fanSHEN will perform the Applecart, both as part of the Wandsworth Arts Festival Fringe. Get down there if you can!

AGM 2014

Tomorrow evening we are holding TTT's annual general meeting (AGM) and 6th birthday party and everyone is welcome to attend.  We will vote for or against our beloved dear leaders, there will be a Tooting related quiz with great prizes, a bit of official business and a chance to hear about TTT's variety of ongoing projects as well as find out how to get involved with some exciting new ones.  Hopefully there will be at least samosas and cake too! 

 

We look forward to catching up with you at Mushkil Aasaan in the Upper Tooting Road from 7pm, Tuesday 29th April.

the heART of the libraries: videos from a community group project in Tooting Library

the heART of the libraries interactive project has been devised by artist Sam Haynes who has been piloting it with Wandsworth Libraries since the new year, and some of the results are can be seen in Tooting Library until the end of April.

Two of us from TTT have been involved - this is a creative and original project which is working with diverse local groups and new technology. It's all about new skills and 'social' sustainability linked with the accessible and welcoming community setting of local libraries.

For example, members of the South London Tamil Welfare Group took part in a short workshop where they learned to use iPads, coached by Chris Nash from the Wandsworth City Learning Centre.

Even though many participants had never touched an iPad before...

...very soon they were onto the next step, which was to make a short video of subjects in the Library itself, recording their own commentary alongside the images..

Now these videos are on view in Tooting Library by a very novel method - each video is accessible via a unique barcode which can be read by a smartphone or iPad with the Microsoft Tag application.

You'll find this on the App Store, or download to an android phone from http://gettag.mobi

Here is one of the barcodes from the set by this group.

If you download the app to your phone, you will be able to scan this barcode image as it's shown here on TTT's blog, in order to see one of the project videos.




If you go to Tooting Library in the next week, with the app installed on your phone, you can find the other barcodes throughout the libary, and see all the other videos too.
Sam's website: http://www.samhaynesart.blogspot.co.uk/

This technique has encouraged me to think about including this appoach in our Community Garden, Tooting Foodival or Gatton School projects. Children or adults could quickly share their own reponses to their experiences, and participate in fascinating new ways to communicate a story made of images, music or commentary in any language....and we can even design our own barcodes (seasonal vegetables?) to suit each project!  - Charles

 

Three practical local projects: do join us!

Furzedown Low Carbon Zone
We had a productive monthly planning meeting last week - please see the minutes and actions here. 
In outline we're at the stage of visiting local partners to explore sites where there is space and interest to be involved by 'hosting' renewable energy generation equipment - whatever technology is appropriate - and sharing in the benefits.
A second stage will be to engage with local people who can become involved as co-owners of a community generation scheme. The Furzedown Festival in June is a target for that, certainly for informal sharing of the project.
Next planning meetings are on 8th May and 3rd June in Furzedown...please come along if you would like to be involved at this stage. Details will be on the TTT Events Calendar on this blog. Contact us on this email link for any further information.

Eighth series of our 'Carbon Conversations' meetings
We are going to offer a free series of local Carbon Conversations from the 19th May to early July this year. Running on Monday evenings (with one Tuesday for luck), this will be a set of six participative meetings which enable individuals to discuss, understand and take control of their carbon footprint, and work out ways to reduce energy consumption and expenses.

It's a very engaging and practical set of meetings.....and even fun.
We'll cover home energy, food, travel and transport, and general consumption of 'stuff'.
All the details are in the flyer for this next series: please click here.
Please contact Charles at transitiontowntooting@gmail.com with any questions.

'Cleaner Air 4 Communities' Project
This project brings citizen science and local action to the challenge of measuring and advocating for clean air. The toolkit - click here to link to a pdf copy - describes some of the steps that can be taken by a community group.
Graham Petersen recently took part in air quality measurement at Clapham Junction, with the Battersea Society (there's a case study on this experience in the toolkit). There is some funding available to support this project, and Graham is investigating that, with a view to improving air quality in Tooting. Please use the Furzedown Low Carbon Zone contact email for more info.

All welcome to join in with these three projects. Please get in touch!

Macro & Micro

Trying to read today's report from the IPCC about the effects of climate change on our planet, along with a mass of media commentary, feels like swimming through treacle, but the overall message is clear: the climate is changing like never before and with a high degree of certainty, the activities of our species are the major contributor. 

Though that might be evident to some (interested in for example and in no particular order peak oil, resource depletion, unsustainable fishing, pollutative extraction, toxic waste ... please go on ad nauseam to yourself), it's always good to get a reminder of the situation we face.  Human activity is screwing up the planet for humans and countless other species on a monumental scale.

So here in south London, TTT is one of the global network of Transition Towns trying to take actions at the micro level to turn this destructive juggernaut around.  Not easy and it can seem like a drop in the ocean, but then an ocean does actually come from many raindrops ...

One "raindrop" here was our successful growing & seed swap event aiming to reconnect people to the growing cycle and the possibility of greater sustainability, and we hope that Tooting will be full of fruit, vegetables and flowers as a result.  Congratulations to Caroline Partridge, the lucky winner of one month's worth of vegetables, generously donated by Abel and Cole.  Caroline happened across the event on her walk through Tooting on Saturday and has since planted plenty of the seeds out in pots in her garden.  We hope you enjoy your prize Caroline!

Meanwhile, Tooting Community Garden tips for growing potatoes, runner beans and sweetcorn can be found by clicking the picture of all those lovely Foodival growers from last autumn.  Will you be joining them?  Could you grow Tooting's biggest sunflower?

Growing Connections as Spring Arrives

The clocks are about to go forward and it’s officially spring time!  We celebrated the start of a new growing season by donating and swapping over one hundred packets of seeds with local people on Saturday.  The event aimed to encourage and support people, young and old, in growing food and flowers in whatever space they have.

 

It was a great opportunity to bring people together. We met some wonderful characters.  Two women excitedly took handfuls of seeds to share with friends and family, and a man, we coaxed in with offers of kale, shared a beautiful tale about how the scent of broad beans takes him back to his childhood in Cyprus.

Following on straight after Foodcycle,there were plenty of activities to entertain everyone. Heather, from Tooting Library, told stories like Jack and the Beanstalk; Sharon taught us how to make origami seed pots from newspapers; Belinda helped us make flowers out of plastic bags for the story walk on 5^th May; and Stephanie wowed us all with paper making from straw collected from the wheat harvest at the garden last year.

One visitor summed it up, saying: “The paper making workshop was amazing. I’ve never seen paper made of straw! I enjoyed chatting with the gardeners and for the price of a piece of my overgrown mint plant, I left with poppy seeds, wild sweet peas, radish, sunflowers and hollyhock seeds – all grown in Tooting and so all the more special as I know that they could do well again this year. Thank you.”

People as young as five and as old as seventy five took away sunflower seeds collected from the community garden, to grow at home.  Tooting Community Garden is running a challenge this year to see who can grow the tallest sunflower in Tooting.  All you have to do is take a photo of the sunflower you have grown this summer and post it to our Facebook page.  We’ll announce the winner at Foodival (13-14 September). JT

Spring Growing Celebration & Seed Swap

Keen gardeners and even those with not-so-green fingers are invited to come along to a Spring growing celebration and seed swap, this Saturday 22nd March in Tooting. The event will aim to show how easy it can be to grow your own produce, even if you don’t have a garden or allotment.

Click 4 Flyer

Event organizer Jenny Teasdale said: "Anyone can grow food and flowers, whether you have a garden, a balcony or just a windowsill.  We want local people to come along on Saturday to learn about growing, to share their expertise and seeds, and to meet new friends and neighbours.”

There will also be free activities on the day including story telling, papermaking, flower making and seed sowing.

You don’t have to be an expert gardener to attend or even have anything to swap. Tooting Community Garden are donating seeds and seedlings, many of which if started now, will produce vegetables in time for Tooting Foodival, the annual festival, now in its 7th year, celebrating locally grown food, cooked by local restaurants and served up free to the community, which will take place 13-14th September.

The Spring growing celebration will take place in the Mushkil Aasaan community space at 222 Upper Tooting Road from 2-4pm.  We hope to see you there.

TTT SMArT Notice board update: 18th March 2014

Arts & Making Happening Right Now In Tooting, courtesy of SMArT

The newest items on the board this week are are on yellow post-its. You can email Jeni for more info on jeniannewalker@gmail.com. Alternatively just take the contact details from the post-it you are interested in.

Great news for our next Meet & Make!

Cressida from the Wandle Valley Girls Project has very kindly offered share the project with us as our feature make for April and you are invited. Attendees work will be exhibited as part of the chealsea fringe. ( work can be collected to keep at the end).

Just for this special workshop Jeni is asking for people to let her know if they are planning to come so we can be sure of numbers. Cressida will be providing transported materials, and her expertise at cost and effort so lets make the most of this fantastic opportunity! email Jeni on Jeniannewalker@gmail.com

Dates for your diary
9th April: Meet & Make - Sprout - Wandle Valley Girls Project  
14th May: Meet & Make - Sprout - Furzedown Oak project 
11th June: Meet & Make - Sprout - Activity TBC 
9th July: Meet & Make - Sprout - Activity TBC

Spring Growing Celebration & Seed Swap

All welcome, and all activities are free:

• Meet the Tooting Community Garden team and local growers in your area
• Pick up seeds, swap seeds, plant seeds and celebrate growing food and flowers in any space
• Activities – story telling, flower making, paper making from wheat straw grown in garden, and seed sowing
• Help us map the green spaces and gardens in and around Tooting

Don't worry if you don't have seeds to swap, just pop in and take some seeds with you to grow, donated by Tooting Community Garden and other local growers.

And: the Tooting Foodival. We're also encouraging local gardeners to grow and donate vegetables for this year's Foodival, which will be on September 13th and 14th.

The Foodival is a celebration of local growing, cooking and eating - and a lot of fun.
 

Much more information to come through the spring and summer. Have a look at what we did in 2013 by clicking on FOODIVAL in the top line of this blog page - and talk to us at the Seed Swap about getting involved in '14.

Ecobuild 2014

This year's Ecobuild had plenty to catch the eye and ear.  I was particularly interested in the Resource section on reuse and the circular economy. Here's three projects which sounded good:

• The RSA's Great Recovery Project about how redesigning systems can help conserve valuable resources and minimise waste. 
  
• The London Re-use Network who give young people a chance to develop skills repairing unwanted household items which are then provided to those most in need, in social housing for example, at the same time saving more dumping in landfill. 
  
• Rentez-vous which enables women to rent fashion items from each other and from fashion houses rather than buying wardrobes full of things rarely to be worn.

Meanwhile a seminar we attended on Community Energy will definitely be helpful for the Furzedown Low Carbon Zone project.  As well as these highlights, Ecobuild as usual hosted the best in sustainable design, construction and renewable energy.  It's invariably an inspiring event to sample all the latest ideas and to gather useful information.             dt

Growth in the Tooting Community Garden

On a sunny day, after 7 weeks with mean temperatures a couple of degrees warmer than normal, it's easy to hope that spring is here. (But last year there was a hard frost in March). Have a look below at some encouraging views in the Community Garden today:


Robin's-eye view: autumn-sown garlic is looking good

We photograph these every year



Winter wheat: future sourdough bread
for the Tooting Foodival!

March 25th 2013: Reception children inspect a perfect disc of ice

Next to bloom: it look like it will be the primroses.
The Community Garden is open every Sunday from 11:00-1:00, and we're located at 5 North Drive, SW16 1RN, opposite Tooting Common. More info on our Facebook page.
Don't forget to come along to our Seed Swap (and more) event from 14:00-17:00 on 22nd March at 222 Mushkil Aasaan, Upper Tooting Rd.
All welcome!

Meet & Make update from SMArT

The Meet & Make at Sprout last Wednesday was really relaxing. The next time I feel like stepping off the treadmill of life for a few moments I might just reach for another 'cathedral window' quilting project which was our featured craft. Just look what we achieved in the 2 hours! It turns out it is more simple to do than it looks.Thanks go to Grandma Lawes in Salisbury who was caring enough to share this skill with me and, now lots of us.

All hand sewn

and to keep you up to date with Arts In Transition locally, here is the SMArT Notice Board.

Things are warming up

for info or questions about making and arts in Tooting you can send Jeni an email on jeniannewalker@gmail.com

"An experience none of us will forget..."

Celebrating the Community Garden & Gatton School rain water catchment project.

In November and December 2013 we posted blog reports about the 'Big Build' project that we've been doing in the garden with Year Six children and staff from Gatton School, and with TTT volunteers. 
We ran this for seven weeks, and today we managed to get all the main parties together to celebrate the successful completion of the project, and thank everyone who contributed.

Wow!

YES it rained a lot in January, and the water butts are full: with a theatrical flourish we lifted the lid off one of them and gazed admiringly at the beautiful water.

NO we don't need the water now! But last summer we ran out completely, and we want to garden within the natural limits of the place. Accommodating unpredicatable weather is going to be a key growing skill in the future!

And as well as creating a tangible result with the project, we went through a fascinating process over the series of sessions with the children and volunteers. To see all the past TTT blog entries for highlights and pictures, click on Gatton School in the menu bar at the top, below the blog title.
And we'll share our learning as a practical case study.

Today, eight children combined to give a speech they wrote themselves about the project (and also said a bit about the whole experience of coming to the garden). If you would like to read the whole speech by the children , please click here. Here are some of their delightful words:

"Our newest project, to build a 'state of the art' water shelter, was an experience that none of us will forget. We helped to saw the wood, make concrete (not cement!) and build the structure. I doubt if any other experience we have will beat this one." 

"All this has been a phenomenal and amazing experience for us. We have not only benefited by learning to make a difference to the community that we live in but also how to be worthy citizens who are aware of what being eco-friendly really means." 

"For some of us, who have only seen vegetables in the supermarket, we were amazed to find out that potatoes grow underground and that sunflowers grow as big as our heads!"   

We were also very pleased to welcome Naseem Aboobaker from Mushkil Aasaan, the local social care service which owns the garden site. In 2011 she talked to us in TTT about using the land for a community garden. Thank you, and we appreciate that trust!
Thanks to Malik Gul of the Wandsworth Community Empowerment Network for joining us, too.

More thanks to Richard who designed the structure - without his energy (and tools), the project would have remained just another nice idea.
And respect to all the volunteers - twelve of us - who have been flexible and amazingly cheerful!
Gatton School funded the water butts, the new timber and roofing materials: thank you! Special gratitude to the school kitchen for making the delicious tiffin today.

Most thanks are due to the 60 Year Six children who were so involved with this. 
Now we'll aim to develop something together for the spring and summer which will catch all our imaginations in the same way - and link with the School's Eco Project. We're continuing to offer outdoor learning with the Reception classes, too.

If you would like to contribute to this school project, or join in with other Community Garden activities, please email us

  All welcome!

Tooting Transitioners Visit Lewes

The sunshine on Saturday was a welcome break after long weeks of endless rain and stormy weather. It turned out to be a special day as a core group of Tooting Transitioners ventured out on their first outing to the historic market town of Lewes in East Sussex in hope of a "Fun Day Out".

Juliet from Transition Town Lewes met us at the station and showed us around, our first stop being to buy some Lewes Pounds, which have an established presence in many of Lewes’s shops and businesses. After a breeze through a vibrant farmers' market, we headed to Seedy Saturday, a busy well attended event with a plethora of stands selling and swapping seeds, exchanging ideas on everything from growing fruit and vegetables to wild basketry and pottery.

Whilst the sun was still out, the group decided to take in the local sites. Lewes is a cute market town with a castle on top of a hill and lots of narrow alleyways and twittens.  Few high street chains clutter up the high street here, but instead numerous individual shops, cafes and restaurants attract the eye. Lewes really is an idyllic place to spend exploring on a Saturday afternoon.

After a hearty lunch at the Lewes Arms washed down with a pint or two of Harveys, we got the opportunity to enjoy a good chat and exchange ideas with Lewes transitioners, and compare the joys of living in our respective boroughs.

After a further meander around town and down to the Ooze flood plain we were ready to finish our afternoon with another pint in the Snowdrop, the site of a tragic avalanche of snow (hence the name) which killed a number of Lewes cottage dwellers in that area.

By now the TTTers and TTLers were on very friendly terms and before we kissed and departed we promised to keep in touch with each other in the hope that one day they too could be tempted to venture out to sample the delights of Tooting.  Malsara

Community Renewable Energy in Furzedown

We want to share this exciting news from the Furzedown Low Carbon Zone (FLCZ) AGM last week. There's no time like the present, and we have decided to take the plunge and try our hardest to establish a community renewable energy project in Furzedown.

What will that look like?

In outline we'll be supporting the generation of local power that should bring local benefits; probably a co-operative enterprise with a legacy for the future.  There are several models for this across the UK and abroad, and there is good local advice available: at the same time it is a pioneering project, and it will be challenging.

Much more information to come as we get going, and we welcome local participation, partners, and support. We have a diverse team who want to make this work. More contributors welcome!

We covered other topics too in the AGM, and the FLCZ aims to keep being active on accessible social, behavioural and technical projects that help demonstrate the value of low-carbon living, now.
Links: 2014 AGM minutes  For background: 2013 Annual Report.

Furzedown Low Carbon Zone AGM - Thursday 23rd January

Furzedown Low Carbon Zone AGM

Furzedown Project, 91-93 Moyser Road, SW16 6SJ

We have postponed the AGM, originally scheduled for January 16th, to next Thursday 23rd January from 7:30-9:00 pm.

The FLCZ was established in 2011 to promote practical local action on sustainability, energy efficiency, and green jobs.
We are considering a community renewable energy generating project, and will be discussing this among other topics.....all welcome!