Enable, who manage Tooting Common on behalf of Wandsworth Council, organise monthly volunteering sessions on the Common for Friends of Tooting Common and others.
Planned dates for forthcoming volunteering sessions are:
Tuesday 10 October
Tuesday 14 November
Tuesday 12 December
Tuesday 9 January 2024
Tuesday 6 February
Tuesday 12 March
Sunday 17 September – Litter pick. Meet at the cafe at 11am
Sunday 17 September – Fun Dog Show. Registration from 1pm, Show starts 2pm
Saturday 7 October – Autumn Plant Walk led by Roy Vickery. Meet at the cafe at 2pm.
Sunday 8 October, evening – Bat walk. For further information, email fotcinformation@gmail.com
Tuesday 10 October – Enable volunteering session, 9.30am. More information to come
Sunday 29 October, afternoon – Pumpkin Parade. More information to come
Sunday 12 November, afternoon – Annual General Meeting. More information to come
Tuesday 14 November – Enable volunteering session, 9.30am. More information to come
Friends of Tooting Common carries out fortnightly litter picks on the Common. The next pick will be on Sunday 17 September, starting at 11am at the cafe on the Common. Please bring a pair of sturdy gloves.
Friends of Tooting Common run monthly bat walks during April to October. The next bat walk will be on Sunday 8 October in the evening.
Bat walks are free to FOTC members. Other people are very welcome to attend, either by joining FOTC (annual membership £6 individual, £10 family), or by making a one-off payment of £5. If you wish to attend a bat walk, please email fotcinformation@gmail.com.
We had a good bat walk on the evening of Sunday 3 September, finding a large amount of bat activity by the lake.
Friends of Tooting Common run regular photo competitions for Tooting Common. We are currently running a competition for the months of July to September 2023. Please send photos for this by Saturday 30 September, to fotcinformation@gmail.com, and entitle the email ‘FOTC photo competition’.
Entry to the competition is free, and open to everyone. The arrangements for our photo competitions are:
– The photo can be of any aspect of Tooting Common, particularly one which brings out its distinctive character
– It can include people, but for any close-up photos the permission of the people concerned should be obtained. Any photos including
children should be from a distance and not identify faces.
– Photo(s) submitted for the competition are then in the “public domain” and may be used publicly
– No-one can submit more than 5 photos for any competition
– The prize is a shopping/entertainment gift voucher for £30 (or cash equivalent) and a copy of a hand-drawn map of Tooting Common by a local artist.
Friends of Tooting Common’s annual Fun Dog Show will take place on the afternoon of Sunday 17 September. Please see poster attached. The Show will be in the ‘events’ area on the Common (to the east of the Dr Johnson Avenue car park). Registration is from 1pm, with the Show starting at 2pm.
There will be 10 classes:
Entry is £3 per dog per class.
Friends of Tooting Common
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.)
Friends of Tooting Common are concerned at the volume of litter on the Common. Litter collection by the Council’s contractor has improved in recent years, but litter remains a problem. We also arrange our own volunteer litter picks.
It is also very important that people take litter home with them, and certainly do not to leave it lying out on the Common. Littering the Common is selfish, and spoils the Common – which is a really excellent greenspace, available to everybody – for everyone else.
There has been very considerable wear and damage to a number of parts of the Common as a result of heavy usage, particularly during summer 2020. These problems have been exacerbated recently by waterlogging, resulting in a number of large muddy areas. FOTC have raised these issues of concern with Enable (who manage the Common on the Council’s behalf), while recognising that these and other problems on the Common may not have easy short-term solutions.
There have been some general concerns about dog and puppy thefts in London, and also some reports recently of people acting suspiciously in some other greenspaces in Wandsworth – eg asking dog owners about their dogs, and/or taking photos of the dogs. There have been no reported incidents of concern on Tooting Common, which is re-assuring. However dog owners using Tooting Common may want to be generally aware of these reports, and to be vigilant to eg anyone asking questions about their dog(s).
Also, if you know of any actual theft, or see someone acting suspiciously, please report it to the police on 101, so that any incidents can be logged and acted on.