On Tuesday 26 May, there will be a Friends of Tooting Common tree walk, led by Roy Vickery, on Tooting Bec Common’s Heritage Trees. The walk will explore the Common’s rich variety of native and planted trees. It will start at 11am at the junction of Emmanuel Road with Rastell Avenue, and will finish about 1pm at the junction of Tooting Bec and Elmbourne Roads. The walk is part of the Wandsworth Heritage Festival. There will be a charge of £6. Booking is not necessary, but if people would want to book beforehand, please email fotcinformation@gmail.com.
FOTC
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On Tuesday 26 May there will be a Friends of Tooting Common tree walk, on Tooting Bec Common’s Heritage Trees, as part of the Wandsworth Heritage Festival. The walk, which will be led by Roy Vickery, will explore Tooting Common’s rich variety of native and planted trees. It will start at 11am at the junction of Emmanuel Road with Rastell Avenue. It will be a linear walk, finishing about 1pm at the junction of Tooting Bec and Elmbourne Roads. There will be a charge of £6. Booking is not necessary, but to book beforehand, please email fotcinformation@gmail.com.
Friends of Tooting Common’s annual Fun Dog Show will be on Sunday 7 June afternoon, in the ‘events’ area of the Common. Poster attached. Registration is from 1pm, with the Show starting at 2pm.
This should again be a very enjoyable and well-attended event. Everyone – whether dog owner or not – is of course very welcome!
Friends of Tooting Common are concerned about dangerous cycling by certain bikes, particularly electric bikes, travelling too fast on the Common, particularly on the Culverden path and other parts of the shared pedestrian/ cycle path. We have been in correspondance on this with Councillor Paul White, Cabinet Member for the Environment on Wandsworth Council. The full correspondance is here:
Further to this correspondance, while we welcome the Council’s recognition of the problem of dangerous cycling, the enforcement exercises being undertaken by the Parks Police and the apparent intention to consider further measures, we think that the Council’s current approach, and certainly any clear timescales for introducing further measures, are not sufficient to deal with this serious issue. Our concerns remain. We will be raising the issue with the Council again, and are monitoring the position.
If you have any comments on this subject, please email them to fotcinformation@gmail.com
Sunday 24 May – Litter pick. Meet at the cafe at 11am
Tuesday 26 May – Tree walk – Tooting Bec Common’s Heritage Trees – starting at 11am at the junction of Emmanuel Road with Rastell Avenue.
Tuesday 2 June – Litter pick. Meet at the cafe at 11am
Sunday 7 June – Fun Dog Show, on ‘events’ field. Registration starts at 1pm, Show starts 2pm. See separate post.
Tuesday 16 June – Litter pick. Meet at the cafe at 11am
For more information, please email fotcinformation@gmail.com.
Friends of Tooting Common carries out frequent litter picks on the Common. The next pick will be on Sunday 24 May, starting at 11am at the cafe on the Common. Please bring a pair of sturdy gloves.
Following that, the next pick will be on Sunday 2 June, starting at 11am at the cafe.
Friends of Tooting Common run monthly bat walks during the spring, summer and autumn. The next bat walk will be in June – date to be confirmed shortly. For more information please email fotcinformation@gmail.com.
Friends of Tooting Common run photo competitions for Tooting Common. Photos can be of any aspect of Tooting Common, particularly one which brings out its distinctive character.
The winner of FOTC’s photo competition for January to March 2026 is Lois Vallely, for the excellent photo attached.
Congratulations to Lois!
FOTC are running a photo competition for the Common for April to June 2026. Please send photos for this by 30 June to fotcinformation@gmail.com, and entitle the email “FOTC photo competition”.
A number of people post photos of the Common on the FoTC Facebook group, particularly of trees and plants.
We (FOTC) draw these together every few months and post them here. The most recent set of photos is here:
We hope these photos help celebrate the Common, particularly for people who aren’t often able to get out onto it.
Many thanks to all of the photographers, and particularly to Roy (Vickery) for his very informative posts, and for sharing his botanical expertise with us. Many thanks also to Eamonn (Richardson) for drawing these photos together.
Some photos for previous months are:
FOTC April/May 2020
We hope this will provide a longer-term record of how the Common looks at different times.
Alongside circulating these photos, we also run regular photo competitions for the Common. (See separate blog post on this.)