Beautify Balham

How Sprout Up is helping to Beautify Balham

October 7, 2024 by beautifybalham

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

August 6, 2024 by beautifybalham

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.

Balham in Bloom 2023

November 29, 2023 by beautifybalham

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.

Air Quality in Balham

March 1, 2023 by beautifybalham

Beautify Balham has been working alongside Desirée Abrahams from Global Action Plan and Graham Peterson from Greener Jobs Alliance to monitor the air quality in Balham and Tooting.

We were loaned an air quality AM520 monitor in November 2022 and, after calibrating it, we set off in pursuit of hot spots where we thought high particle pollution might be found.

The accepted level of PM 2.5 particulates per cubic square metre is 15mgm (averaged over 24 hours), set by the WHO (World Health Organisation). Action for Clean Air gives a very good definition of what we are measuring and why. They also have free resources for schools and businesses.

Nitrogen Oxide tubes are placed on lampposts and are available free from the council. We have one sited on Bedford Hill near the junction with Hildreth Street Market, which has been installed by Imperial College, so we can access that data.

Monitoring air quality near Hildreth Street

We started at Bedford Hill Place, where we meet for our monthly litter picks, and headed south going up Bedford Hill. We then cut through Elmfield Road, as we wanted to monitor school streets, and crossed over Balham High Road to Balham Park Road and outside Trinity St. Mary’s School. We then cut up Boundaries Road under the railway bridge towards Chestnut Grove outside the school there. We crossed Endelsham Road into Ramsden Road then crossed the High Road up Bedford Hill to complete our circuit. These are the readings from our findings.

Monitoring results:

10:15 [back of Sainsburys] – 21mgm
10:30 [Bedford Hill/Fernley Rd near Balham station] – 23/25mgm
10:30 [Elmfield Rd/Ravenstone School] – 17mgm
10:31 [Elmfield Rd/Ravenstone School] – 24mgm
10:35 [Balham HS in front of restaurant] – 36- 43mgm
10:40 Trinity St Mary’s Balham Park Rd] – 16/17mgm
10:45 Access Storage /under RR bridge, Boundaries Rd] – 15 – 19mgm
10:46 Access Storage/under RR bridge, Boundaries Rd – 36 – 16mgm
10:50 [corner Boundaries Rd and Chestnut Grove] – 20mgm
10:50 [skip/lorry passes] – 27mgm
10:55 [ Endelsham Rd midway-end of road] – 22- 25mgm
11:00 [corner Ramsden and Norgrove] – 19mgm
11:05 [Balham Library]- 21mgm
11:06 [ Waitrose] – 20/22/23/24mgm
11:08 [corner Bedford Hill and Balham High Road] – 36- 55- 61- 70mgm
11:09 [Bedford Hill Rd] in front of café] – 143-157-167-170mgm
**Levels of PM2.5 often went higher when we were passing food outlets**
** Generally, higher PM2.5 level at junctions**

It would appear that on the whole the main streets around Balham are relatively safe, just a few points above the average, but there were hot spots outside food outlets cooking food, and buses idling at traffic lights or bus stops (even though that are deemed to be eco buses now!)

We want to use this data to encourage the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, and Transport for London (TFL) to allow businesses in Balham High Road to have planters outside their premises, and for TfL to plant more trees to mitigate the effects of polluted air and flooding.

We are in negotiation with the Mayor’s office and TFL to move this forward so hopefully with their support, we will see more greenery in Balham and Tooting in the near future. The Mayor’s office has a scheme ‘Trees for London’ giving £3.1million for tree planting in the capital this summer and they are aiming to plant 1000 new trees in priority areas ‘Trees for Streets’.

The scheme is for residents or businesses to sponsor a tree then the Mayor will sponsor one further tree to match fund it. (They have planted 430,000 trees since 2016 and aim to increase the number of trees in London by 10% by 2050.)

Wandsworth Council has not joined either of these schemes so we will put pressure on them to do so.

This fits perfectly with Beautify Balham’s aims ‘to clean up and green up Balham’.

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!

– Jean Millar and The Beautify Balham Team

The Triangle Garden at Chestnut Grove

October 7, 2022 by beautifybalham

Armed with forks and trowels and wearing Beautify Balham hi-vis vests, together we are going to continue the wonderful work started by local residents Richard, Charlie and Brendan. This garden is on land that no one seems to own, but has been adopted for many years and admired by passers by.

Sadly Richard died, and Charlie and Brendan have hung up their gardening gloves, but they generously asked Beautify Balham to continue their good work.

Justine and Jean from Beautify Balham decided it would be a good idea for children to be involved so asked the local schools. Mark Peters, Deputy Head from Hornsby House School responded.

Each Thursday from 3.45-4.30pm until daylight diminishes, we are going to tidy up and replant this mature garden that just needs a little TLC and some more plants to fill the gaps.

If anyone has bulbs or plants to give to this worthy cause, or could support with a donation to make towards the upkeep, please contact us at hello@beautifybalham.org or donate via PayPal using the form here.

Watch this space & enjoy the cleaning up and greening up of another corner of Balham!

– 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!

Balham in Bloom 2022

June 26, 2022 by beautifybalham

Beautify Balham held the presentation of prizes for our Balham in Bloom 2022 runners up and winners on Saturday 25th June 2022 on Bedford Hill Place.

We attracted lots of interest from the passers-by who were drawn by our eye-catching gazebo and high-vis vests! Children were interested by our planters, and seemed to get excited about gardening. We even gave them seeds to take the fun back home!

This event was arranged to celebrate the hard work from our Balham in Bloom 2022 entrants – who demonstrated passion and creativity in their award winning gardening spaces!

We again enlisted the help of professional gardeners Cheryle Morison, Wayne Amiel, and Gareth James to help judge who showed the best amateur gardening efforts in the local area.

At 14:30 we started announcing our awards for the Balham in Bloom 2022 competition. Our successful runners up and winners received Balham in Bloom 2022 certificates, and prizes generously donated by local businesses.

The winners all seemed delighted, and it was great seeing gardening enthusiasts and those fond of Balham connect after an amazing day!

Thank you to all logo designers, competition entrants, business partners, ceremony attendees, volunteers and committee members for making Balham in Bloom 2022 such a success!

We hope to see even more support and interest in next year’s Balham in Bloom competition!

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.

– 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!