Beautify Balham

Striving for a greener, cleaner and more beautiful Balham.

beautifybalham

Living Pillars in Balham

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‘Living Pillars’ are making their appearance around London but you may be asking yourself, what are they exactly?

Living Pillar™ Spring Foxlgloves – image provided by Scotscape

Many of you may have heard of ‘Living Walls’. They are often found in urban environments on the sides of houses, hotels, office buildings, and are walls covered with plants. Living walls have numerous benefits – not only do they improve the air quality by trapping pollution at street level, but they also increase biodiversity. Cities by their nature are covered in concrete, which traps heat and exacerbates increases in temperature. Living walls mitigate this heat by removing solar radiation, and make for a cooler & more comfortable urban environment.

Orchard Lisle Living Wall for Team London Bridge – image provided by Scotscape

Finding walls to accommodate a living wall can be hard to come by, but Living Pillars aim to make this concept easier to implement. The company Scotscape Limited is behind the brilliant engineering idea of the LivingPillar™. The wall of plants is wrapped around a lamp post rather than a wall and, although smaller in square meterage, has the same advantages as a living wall. The living pillars increase biodiversity and provide living corridors within cities. Furthermore these living pillars trap fine particles and mitigate air pollution. They help make our cities greener, which is known to benefit mental health and general well-being.

Smart Living Pillar CuPhosco – image provided by Scotscape

As you can see, Living Pillars are a wonderful addition to our cities, and we are thrilled to have two about to be installed in Balham on Bedford Hill! You can see more of Scotscape’s work through their website here.

Have you seen any Living Walls or Living Pillars recently? Send us your photos of your favourite Living Pillars through the hashtag: #BeautifyBalham.

– Justine and the Beautify Balham Team

If you want to write to us and have your own blog post & thoughts placed on this website to help others, please reach out to us via our Contact Us page!

Summer Flowering Bulbs and Annual Seeds

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March is the harbinger of spring.

We notice signs of life in our flower beds, tree pits and on the commons. Snowdrops first (see some beautiful examples of snowdrops growing in RHS Gardens here), then winter aconites, anemones, celandines, daffodils, crocuses, bluebells, and finally the tulips. But if, like me, you enjoy a successful spring garden before it all goes rather quiet, you may need some help on how to bridge this next season into summer (as I often do)!

Snowdrops
Echinops
Hydrangea

The answer is to plant summer flowering bulbs, and also the very versatile and
economical annuals sown as seeds. Make the most of what you have. As Clare Gogerty writes in the Observer Gardening Special, ‘Limited outside space needn‘t stop you growing an impressive display of flowers and edibles’, so think creative and get growing!

Summer bulbs such as agapanthus, begonias, gladioli, dahlias, crocosmia, lilies and ranunculus all put on a good show. Most of them enjoy the sun at some part of the day, but they can be planted in pots to move around the garden, or placed on a balcony.

Daylilies
Tiger Lilies
Lilium Casa Blanca

As Balham in Bloom takes place in late June, here are some other tips to get your
gardens, hanging baskets and window boxes blooming in time for the event:

Sow some wildflower seeds – which are readily available online or in garden centres. Seeds that are easy, and which children will enjoy planting, are candy tuft, nasturtium, marigolds and cosmos. These can grow quite tall, so allow room if they are in open ground. Love-in-the
mist (Nigella) and poppies are easy too, and give a great splash of colour just when you need it. Seed catalogues are in abundance now, and can be found in the local shops in Balham and Tooting: Poundshops, Wilkos, Lidl and Aldi. They all stock seeds that are cheap and easy to grow. You can also read about some more unusual seeds in Capital Gardens’ latest blog post (and visit them at Neal’s Nurseries)!

Window boxes sown with wildflower seeds!
Cosmos with a bee!
Cosmos with a bee!
Echinacea

Vegetable seeds are also readily available, and exciting too – including runner and
dwarf beans, courgettes, radishes, lettuces, ‘cut and come again’ salad
leaves, spring onions, tomatoes and chillies. Planted together with flowering plants they make a really good show, and are edible as a bonus! SimplySeed.co.uk has a great selection of vegetable seeds available.

Chillies
Tomatoes

So, get the soil ready by digging over, add extra compost (peat-free!) and some gravel for drainage if you can. Sow according to the instructions on the packet and wait. Keep watered if dry, and place on a sunny window sill to start them off or in a propagator if you have one. Label them or get the children to make their own labels and decorate them (wooden lolly sticks and plant labels are better than plastic)! Try to recycle old plant pots rather than buying new ones, or use empty containers that you are throwing out with a few drainage holes in the base. Enjoy being creative and foster the love of gardening with your children so they will grow up respecting nature and know how their food is grown.

Get kids involved
Start planting
Dahlia
Enjoy the colourful results!

Once you’ve cultivated some beautiful plants, enter Balham in Bloom 2022 with your front gardens, communal gardens, window boxes or hanging baskets! Last entries are on Sunday 29th May, for the presentation which takes place on Saturday 25th June. You can visit https://beautifybalham.org/balham-in-bloom/ for more information. It’s free to enter!
Please send any queries to hello@beautifybalham.org and we will be happy to answer them.

– Jean Millar and the Beautify Balham Team

If you want to write to us and have your own blog post & thoughts placed on this website to help others, please reach out to us via our Contact Us page!

Hedge Fun

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So many of the lovely Victorian houses in Balham are being returned to a modern-day version of their former glory, undergoing a whole host of restorations and improvements.

We are usually asked to restore the downtrodden (and often dug up) front gardens, something we do with great enthusiasm, skill and pride: new mosaic paths, Yorkstone porch steps, low brick walls, railings and gates – all beautifully proportioned and a fitting welcome
into the lovely living space beyond. Perhaps the biggest concession to modern times, though, is the paving that usually goes in front of the bay window. ‘Low maintenance, please’ is the main reason here, coupled with today’s added hassles of dustbins, wheelie bins and ‘somewhere to put the bikes’.

This all looks great but often, in my view, lacks a softness that is easily remedied with some planting. Furthermore all paving is proven to exacerbate flooding in urban environments. There are many, many options here including pots, shrubs, ‘lollipop’ bay trees, formal parterres (if you’ve got the space), specimen trees and loads more.

My top recommendation, though, is the much maligned and massively underrated hedge. Don’t be put off by the woody and overbearing privet relics of the past. A new evergreen hedge, like Yew, Bay, Privet or Lonicera will serve you in so many ways. Situated in the traditional strip just behind the low front wall, they bring softening greenery to your front garden combined with a high degree of privacy from passers-by.

But hedges are so much more than just a lush screen. They soak up excess surface water after rainfall and masses of greenhouse carbon dioxide at night-time. Better still, research has shown that they absorb traffic noise and traffic pollution, filtering many of the harmful particulates from exhaust fumes. More hedges make for much cleaner air at home and in
the wider community.

And the low maintenance? Well, a haircut once a year, two at the most, is all they need. And if that doesn’t represent a great investment, I don’t know what does.

Chris Martin, of The London Front Garden Company Ltd

If you want to write to us and have your own blog post & thoughts placed on this website to help others, please reach out to us via our Contact Us page!

The Bin Bag Challenge

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May I ask you a delicate question?
How many bin bags do you put out your front door each week?

The Bin Bag Challenge

A walk around the neighbourhood on collection day suggests an average of 4 bags per
household. That amounts to 1.1kg of household waste … per person in the UK … per day!
Our waste is palpable evidence of our consumption: food leftovers, food waste, plastic bags and wraps, food containers, cleaning product packaging, single-use wipes and pads, broken toys, old clothes or simply unused clothes, etc.

Behind this visible part of the iceberg also lies the less visible waste generated during the production and transportation of all these items. We’ve all read about how our consumption has sky-rocketed over the past 5 decades and how it is impacting our planet. Time to act!

Yes, of course, time to act. But it is also time to send a report to the boss, to take the kids to school, the keep the house in order, and place food on the table. If there is time left, we would rather spend it on some fun and relaxing time.

This is where the Bin Bag Challenge comes in handy. It is about having a drink with friends who also want to reduce their waste, exchanging tips and celebrating smaller bin bags. There are no costs involved, just help and support.

How does it work exactly?

You join a group of friendly people and receive weekly challenges through WhatsApp on topics like ‘Cleaning’, ‘Beauty’ and ‘Food’. Group members share their experience, ideas and tips to meet the challenge. They support each other and meet to celebrate.
No shaming, no judging – just support.
A user-friendly website also provides information, DIY recipes and addresses of Wandsworth-based and online shops to help with the challenge & to drive down waste.

We tested the solutions ourselves, so can guarantee that it is for “normal” people – there is no need to be a zero-waste guru! Previous groups have reported impressive results – such as going from 4 to 2 bags a week, over 9 weeks. Several participants even went on to create their own group straight after their first iteration of the program, to keep cutting down their waste and to help others do so. You can see how this scheme can make a huge difference!

Make friends. Be proud. Take action against climate change.
Join the Bin Bag Challenge today!

You can find more information here – www.binbagchallenge.com – and you can get in touch through the Contact Us page.

To get you started: you can see our blog post on The Benefits of Composting here to reduce your bags of waste before they start adding up (and smelling foul)!

Are you interested in joining in? Have you just started the Bin Bag Challenge yourself? Let us know how you get on using social media with the hashtag: #BeautifyBalham.
Good luck!

Alice & Catherine, and The Beautify Balham Team

If you want to write to us and have your own blog post & thoughts placed on this website to help others, please reach out to us via our Contact Us page!

Feed the Birds

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A wren spotted locally

Barbara is one of the guides who leads bird-walks on Wandsworth Common. For more details see the Friends of Wandsworth Common website.

Gardens are an important habitat for wildlife and even a small urban garden can attract a variety of birds and give hours of pleasure as you get to know your regular visitors. Engaging with nature is good for mental well-being and you can even contribute to citizen science by reporting your sightings to BTO’s Garden Bird Watch and RSPB’s Big Garden Bird Watch on the last weekend of January.

Providing feeders helps supplement the natural food supply. Sunflower Hearts and Fat Balls are favourites with a range of birds. I regularly see House Sparrows, Starlings, Blue Tits, Great Tits, Coal Tits and Goldfinches on my feeders, with Robins, Dunnocks, Blackbirds, Magpies and Wood Pigeons foraging for the food dropped onto the ground underneath. Even if you don’t have a garden you can try a window feeder and watch the birds from the comfort of your armchair.

Wren

Position feeders in the open, but close to a shrub or tree where birds can perch to wait their turn and retreat to safety if they feel threatened. Feeders with a cage surround can help deter squirrels and larger birds, although the Wood Pigeons and Magpies have become adept at balancing on my window feeder! To reduce the spread of disease, feeders should be washed regularly, and mouldy food discarded. Equally important is water – both for drinking and bathing – but ensure you add a few stones so that any insects or small mammals which fall in can escape. Birds can take a little while to get used to change so be patient: sit back and wait for them to come.

Article by Barbara Littlechild, Wandsworth Common Bird Walk Guide and a Friend of Wandsworth Common

If you want to write to us and have your own blog post & thoughts placed on this website to help others, please reach out to us via our Contact Us page!

Artificial Grass or Real Grass? Don’t Fake It!

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Kirsten Botting, amateur gardener, local community champion, and Beautify Balham committee member discusses her pet hate – artificial grass.

Over the past decade the urban trend for artificial has been growing. Gardens have been dug up, ripped of their natural vegetation and replaced with plastic grass. Roof tops and balconies have been carpeted with it. Schools and nurseries, as well as sports pitches are using artificial grass.

I get it. Modern artificial grass has come a long way. It looks like real grass. It’s cheaper than having your garden turfed. In shady gardens you have a green lawn all year round. If you have dogs or kids, you don’t get the mud in the house. If you are unable or don’t have the time to maintain your garden, it would appear to be the perfect solution.

You don’t have to water it which some might say helps when we have a water shortage. But you still have to clear it of leaves and moss, so it isn’t exactly maintenance free. Fake grass doesn’t require feeding so arguably isn’t pouring chemicals into the soil.

Companies market their artificial grass as environmentally friendly because it’s recyclable or single use plastic! Fake grass might have the look and feel of natural turf, but it’s not grass – it’s fake.

Fake grass is not an eco-friendly alternative to natural grass. It blocks access to the biodiversity above and below the ground. Bees and birds can’t feed from it, and worms and bugs below the ground will be starved of food. Fake grass does nothing for the animals in our gardens.

Furthermore, it has no climate benefits at all. In fact, the processing of the plastic emits carbon and uses fossil fuels. And what about the micro plastics from the finished product?

On the other hand, real grass has real environmental benefits such as soaking up moisture, providing homes for insects and bugs, and food for birds. If maintaining it is a problem, let it grow into a meadow and mow a path through it! And what is more delightful than smelling a newly mown lawn, walking bare footed and feeling the coolness from the blades and the warmth from the soil?

So, I say, don’t fake it! Go natural!

Which side are you on in the turf war? Have you got a beautiful natural lawn to show off? Has your garden made others green with envy? Share your grassy feats on social media with the hashtag: #BeautifyBalham.

If you want to write to us and have your own blog post & thoughts placed on this website to help others, please reach out to us via our Contact Us page!