Community

Beautify Balham Nominated for a Tooting Heroes Award

May 31, 2022 by beautifybalham

We are thrilled to announce that Jean Millar and Justine McNeil of the Beautify Balham team have been nominated for a Tooting Heroes award, for their service for our local community.

Jean and Justine will be attending a reception in the Houses of Parliament in June, hosted by Dr Rosena Allin-Khan, Labour MP for Balham, Earlsfield, Furzedown and Tooting.

We are incredibly grateful for the nomination, and the support that you have all given us. We will post updates on our socials with further news!

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!

Living Pillars in Balham

March 29, 2022 by beautifybalham

‘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!

Balham In Bloom 2021

July 1, 2021 by beautifybalham

Saturday 26th June was in the diary way back in January for our first ever Balham in Bloom competition.

Now that day is over, how did it go?

Well, it was a challenge but exciting!

With Bedford Hill being closed to cars, we were able to attract more pedestrians than usual and our brand new ‘Beautify Balham’ gazebo was a focal point for signing up for our now regular litter pick.

Beata Allen from Think-Outside set up planters and veg trugs to encourage children passing by to plant seeds and take them home in order to instil an early interest in gardening and biodiversity.

The Mayor of Wandsworth, Richard Field, arrived at 2pm to present awards to the worthy winners and runners up of our first ever Balham in Bloom competition 2021.

Judges of the competition were chosen from professional gardeners: Cheryle Morison, Wayne Amiel, Gareth James and Lwin Millar.

A unanimous decision was made and the successful candidates were presented with a certificate and a variety of vouchers from local stores: (Robbies Photographics, Flower Sanctuary, Charlotte Cave, Love Triangle, Jefferson’s Ice Cream, Audley’s Nightingale Place, and Waitrose) plus a bottle of champagne kindly donated by the Coop. A voucher was also given to purchase plants at Petals, our local Hildreth Street market stall at a discount of 15%.

A photoshoot with the Mayor then ensued and a good time was had by all.

We hope to go from strength to strength with ‘Balham in Bloom’ each year, increasing the number of participants amongst residents and businesses. A communal garden category may be added too.

In the meantime, we have other issues to tackle in Balham: more tree planting, pollution level monitoring, petitioning for Balham Station Bridge to be painted and encouraging more businesses to green up their frontages. Ongoing litter picks will take place on the first Saturday of each month and may become more frequent.

The next one is this Saturday 3rd July at 11am Bedford Hill Place, at the back if Sainsbury’s. So see you there!

– Jean and the Beautify Balham team

Plant now for a vibrant garden — Best Business Frontage Winner

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 To Create The Balham Floral Boom

April 1, 2021 by beautifybalham

I am originally from a small town in Worcestershire, which tends to mean that you aren’t too far from rolling fields, forests and other open spaces to indulge in nature. When moving to London over 7 years ago, I followed the usual criteria for movers, hopefully to find somewhere with a nearby supermarket, good transport links, a good local pub (of course!) but I added an equally important addition to my list. I had to be near green open space, somewhere I could walk and get my balance of ‘countryside’ as well as that of living in a city. Luckily, I managed to find somewhere only ten minutes walk from Tooting Common, which has definitely helped during the last 12 months to break up the working from home rut we are all in, particularly as I live somewhere without a garden.

It’s so important to have community groups/campaigns like Beautify Balham to support and encourage us to make where we live greener and cleaner and protecting the local ecosystem. It’s fantastic to see how much support this group has garnered. The aims of the group resonate with my own and so with ‘Balham in Bloom’ around the corner we have a perfect opportunity to achieve them.

Although I am limited to the constraints of my top floor flat this hasn’t stopped me from thinking of how I could create my own floral arrangements, albeit from my own (very) small gardening experience and sharing it in this blog. However, I will have to admit that prior to writing this I did put in a call to my grandmother, who briefly lived in the area just after 1945, and who has (for 50 plus years) run a small independent garden and plant nursery so I cannot take complete credit for it!

So my suggestions are:

Ready grown bedding plants

Geraniums (Red, White or Pink)

Pansies (mixed Colours)

Marigolds (Orange)

Petunias (Pink)

Carnations (Pink and scented)

*All of these plants if they are planted just after the last frost (around May) they will flower in time for June and last until September/October time. They should also be planted in bedding compost and regularly watered (daily) particularly in drier weather.

Potted Plants

Hybrid roses

Strawberry plants

Raspberry plants

*These should be planted/maintained the same as the bedding plants but will last year on year.

I am personally really looking forward to seeing the creations that start to emerge on our streets and I would encourage everyone to get involved and all make Balham a greener, cleaner and more beautiful Balham.

– Thomas Mytton

Meet Jean Millar, Founder of Beautify Balham

February 8, 2021 by beautifybalham

Balham and Tooting are vibrant places to live but we do sometimes struggle with littering, fly-tipping and a lack of green spaces. Jean Millar has lived in Balham for over 40 years and although she loves it, she began to find the litter and lack of greenery in the High Road a bit depressing. So she suggested starting a campaign to collect litter and plant greenery in the High Road and ‘Beautify Balham’ was born.

Jean’s efforts include organisation of litter picks and asking participants what green ideas they would like to see introduced. She has also contacted local churches and schools to garner support and encourage other sections of the community to become even more involved in ‘green’ projects.

“I felt Balham needed a face lift with plants, trees and flowers. Also a regular clean up session so that litter would be a thing of the past.”
– Jean Millar

Jean is exploring the possibility for more trees and has also offered her ideas to improve Balham bridge and to ‘green’ the station wall. She is an example of how one person can kick-start changes that the whole community can benefit from.

We chat with Jean over a (socially distanced!) coffee to find out more…

WHY DID YOU START BEAUTIFY BALHAM? I have lived in Balham for many years, but only in retirement have I had the time to really look at the environment around me. Although I love living here, I saw a lot of concrete and grey buildings, also litter and fly tipping. I felt Balham needed a face lift with plants, trees and flowers. Also a regular clean up session so that litter would be a thing of the past.

WHAT ARE YOUR OBJECTIVES FOR THIS YEAR? For more people to know about the campaign, to encourage more volunteers to join the monthly litter pick and to have a celebration in June, ‘Balham in Bloom‘, so that residents and businesses can take part in beautifying their own front gardens and premises as a community project. To encourage local businesses to take responsibility for their rubbish and sponsor Balham in Bloom.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE THING ABOUT BALHAM? The vibrance of the streets and diversity of people.

WILL YOU BE ENTERING BALHAM IN BLOOM? Yes, of course!