Beautify Balham

Striving for a greener, cleaner and more beautiful Balham.

beautifybalham

How Sprout Up is helping to Beautify Balham

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Recently we were delighted to hear from Seonaid and Rose at Sprout Up, offering to help us re-home leftover plants from the Wimbledon tennis tournament. With their help, we were able to collect hydrangeas, cornus, euonymus, salvias and ferns – all in Wimbledon’s colours – which we have used to fill gaps in a few of our communal gardens, as well as our new community garden along Chestnut Grove.

Sprout Up is a local garden design and maintenance business with an all-female team who have helped to beautify a great many gardens in Balham and the surrounding area. Their designs are always striking, but what we particularly like is the way they think through how the space will be used – making sure it works for the whole family.

Like us, they are passionate about making Balham more beautiful, supporting nature, protecting against climate change, and getting more people outdoors. As well as working with Beautify Balham, they give back to the community through their social impact arm, Sprout Up Schools – using leftover plants and materials to build better outdoor spaces in schools.

You may have seen Seonaid (pronounced Shona!) and the Sprout Up van at Balham in Bloom 2024, where she offered gardening advice, sold plants and ran seed-sowing activities for children. She is really passionate about helping children from all backgrounds to access nature and her RHS Hampton Court show garden, Believe in Tomorrow, won a silver-gilt medal.

If you are thinking of doing some garden work, do have a look at the Sprout Up website or find them on Instagram.

Balham in Bloom 2024

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For the first time since the creation of the Balham in Bloom competition in June
2020, Beautify Balham hosted a half-day festival featuring remarkable participants:
The Thoughtful Fruiter, Friends of Wandsworth Common, Climate Action Group,
Sprout Up and Jefferson’s Ice-Cream, to name a few. The event was a hive of
activities for all ages and the salsa dancing performed by the talented ‘SASalsa‘
group, and the accomplished musicians of the band ‘Swing Driven Thing‘, made
the whole event truly spectacular.

At 2pm the prizes were distributed to the brilliant winners and runners up for the
Balham in Bloom competition. The categories were:

  • Best residential front garden
  • Best residential communal garden
  • Best window box / hanging basket / terrace
  • Best business frontage

We had some fantastic entries, and our three judges applauded their efforts to green
up Balham.

The Balham in Bloom Festival seeks to highlight the urgent need to green gardens in
our city at a time when urban heat is on the increase and paved gardens exacerbate
run off and flooding. Just adding a few pots on paved areas will help to mitigate
these issues and also add to the dire need for more biodiversity in our streets.

There are plenty of incredibly useful websites and books to help find easy and cheap was to green your garden. Please see a collection of resources below – (so many inspirational stories and tips to make Balham and London greener!):

Websites:

Books:

We would also like to take the opportunity to thank the local businesses who kindly
donated the prizes.

If you want to help Beautify Balham on one of our litter picks or other events, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at hello@beautifybalham.org.

Climate Fresk

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Climate change is a scary notion.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could discover ways of taking direct action?

France, Paris, 2022-12-14. Illustration of the Climate fresk workshops to raise awareness of climate change. Photograph by Mary-Lou Mauricio / Hans Lucas. France, Paris, 2022-12-14. Illustration de l’atelier de la Fresque du Climat pour sensibiliser au dereglement climatique. Photographie par Mary-Lou Mauricio / Hans Lucas.

Cedric Ringenbach, a French engineer, came up with an ingenious idea. He came up with an interactive game, Climate Fresk, that works with the general public and organisations to bring them on board with the climate transition and their mission is to educate the public. In doing so participants are given the opportunity to take constructive and direct action to help tackle climate change. Their ambition is to create a network of people who are able to grow exponentially and share the knowledge on climate change and in doing so reach a social tipping point that will help guide us to a low carbon world. They’ve had 1.5 million participants so far!

How does this work?
The general public is welcome to attend a 3hrs workshop either in person or online. A facilitator – a Climate Fresk volunteer – will teach the participants how climate change works, and empower them to take effective action as a citizen (a maximum of 20 participants per facilitator is permitted). Companies are also welcome to sponsor employees and specific workshops bring together participants from different companies where they are able to explore the levers of action. Within a professional context.

Check out their website to find a workshop next to you – www.climatefresk.org

Cooling streets in heatwaves

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Damien Gayle, journalist at The Guardian newspaper, has published an article that describes how new research suggests green space provides a significant cooling mechanism for urban setting during heatwaves.

New research by the Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCCAR) have just published a comprehensive review into the heat-mitigating effects of green spaces during heatwaves. Their conclusion suggests that sites such as the Chelsea Physic Garden and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew reduce air temperatures during heatwaves by an average of 5C.

London is fortunate to have plenty of green spaces but this can always improve, especially in the centre of town where concrete streets absorb heat and create the urban heat island effect. This phenomenon is caused by structures such as buildings, roads and other metal or concrete infrastructure absorbing heat and re-emitting the sun’s heat, resulting in temperatures rising.

Green spaces, urban parks, wetlands, green walls, and even street trees, were found to significantly mitigate the warm temperatures. The paper goes on to suggest that cities can unlock more benefits by linking green spaces together into ‘green corridors’. These are beneficial in the cooling process but also provide biodiversity channels which are essential at a time when the loss of biodiversity in England is at an all-time high.

Balham is fortunate to be in close proximately to three commons, and plenty of tree lined streets, but more can be done. There are plenty of opportunities to install green walls which would provide a cooling mechanism and establish the green corridors that the paper describes. This valuable new piece of research highlights the importance of green spaces to keep urban populations safe from future heatwaves, and this is especially pertinent as we experienced the warmest February on record for England and Wales.

You can read Damien Gayle’s article at The Guardian here.
Please tag us @beautifybalham if you see any more articles that encourage us to develop our green spaces!

Balham in Bloom 2023

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Our third Balham in Bloom competition was yet another wonderful celebration of the beautiful gardens of Balham and the gardening skill of our residents.

A new category was added – Best Balham Street – to the traditional list of Best Front Garden and Best Hanging Basket & Window Box, and we may add another in 2024.
Watch this space!

This year we were joined by Balham Climate Action, who are a newly formed local action group of Friends of the Earth. There was of course the traditional planting of
flowers for all ages and then the Beautify Balham team practised some standing up yoga, guided by the talented Anh, founder of Music Yoga Flow.

We were very grateful to our judges – professional gardeners Cheryle Morison, Wayne Amiel and Gareth James – for selecting the winners amidst a record number of entries.

The winners and runner ups were celebrated and received their much-deserved prizes from Helen Egan, our Balham resident and world-renowned Irish dancer. She was the former lead dancer in Lord of The Dance, the Irish musical and dance show and alongside Michael Flatley danced to sold out crowds around the world. Helen was the original dancer to play the character, the Little Spirit, who is at the centre of a story that sees good ultimately overcome evil. A massive thank you to her for participating in our event!

We would like to take this opportunity to thank the local businesses who kindly donated the prizes:

We look forward to our 4th Balham in Bloom on Saturday the 15th of June 2024. If you are interested in participating in a future Balham in Bloom, you can register today!
If you want to help Beautify Balham on one of our litter picks or other events, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at hello@beautifybalham.org.

Autumn to Winter

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October has now ended, taking with it the last of the summer’s heat.
With the change of seasons comes a different set of needs for our gardens.
Autumn is the perfect time to tidy up before the really cold weather sets in. As plants and grass begin to slow their growth, it’s a good time to have a clear up in the garden.

Mulch and Mush

Cut back plants that have turned brown and mushy, but maybe leave some of the more interesting seed heads for the birds and to add interest to the borders architecturally.
If you have a lawn, it’s better to avoid cutting it. Aerate the lawn with a fork then rake up leaves as they fall and use them for mulch on your flower beds, or you can also gather up the leaves and place them in black plastic sacks. Tie up the bag and make holes with a fork before storing them behind a shed or out of sight. Wait until the Spring when they will have mulched down, ready to spread around trees and shrubs.

Indoor flowers

Prepare indoor bulbs for flowering at Christmas. Hyacinths and daffodils can be forced during the winter months. You can find bulbs on sale now in garden centres and nurseries. Prepare a pot with holes in the bottom and cover with a few crocks. Mix some compost with grit and fill the pot half way up. Place the bulbs on top then cover with more compost and water slightly. Place in a dark cupboard and check for new growth. Water if dry. Bring them out into the light onto a window sill when shoots are about 5 cm, then enjoy watching them grow and flower in your home.

More things to do this week…

  • Deadhead flowers that are continuing to bloom
  • Collect seeds and store in paper envelopes or bags and label. Store in a dry place until Spring
  • Prune branches on trees and shrubs that have died back or are in the way. Cut back to a healthy side branch
  • Divide deciduous shrubs by cutting back foliage, forking roots apart and replanting elsewhere
  • Plant bulbs: daffodils, crocus, iris reticulata, muscari (grape hyacinth) and scillas in window boxes and in the garden. Tulips can be planted now too or well into November or December.

Oh yes, and don’t forget to feed the birds! Seeds, berries and suet balls will be appreciated and a lovely way to light up a gloomy day watching from your window!

Enjoy your Autumn and Winter gardening! Please send your seasonal gardening tips to us at hello@beautifybalham.org or tag us in on social media through @BeautifyBalham!