Abundance Wimbledon Newsletter
July 2025
WELCOME TO OUR JULY 2025 NEWSLETTER
This year's warm and sunny weather has delivered flourishing fruit trees, with picking underway and lots more to come.
July has been a wonderful month for plums, 2025 promises to be a bumper year! Fruit picked over the summer will be donated to worthwhile causes in the borough and in mid September we will hold our 15th annual Fruit Day.
FRUIT DAY 2025
Fruit day is a much loved community event for all ages - don't forget to save the date!
Saturday 13th September, 11.00am - 2.30pm
St Mark's Church Hall and grounds
Wimbledon
SW19 7ND
We are delighted to confirm the following stalls and activities:
- Homemade produce - including jams, chutneys, cakes, pies and cordials
- Local honey - fresh from Alison's apiary in Martin Way and Dave's apiary in Tooting
- Apple juice - freshly squeezed on the Apple Press using apples donated from local gardens
- Apple pie-making - take home your own Apple pie! An all ages activity (popular with little ones).
- Children's activities - free activities for all ages. Full details in the next article
- Live music - this year we are delighted to welcome The New MUGS, a ukelele band from New Malden
- Garden plants - a wonderful range of plants donated from gardens across the borough
- The Longest Peel! - this fun competition (as well as an Abundance raffle) will be run by local Girl Guides and Brownies
- Sustainable Merton
- Friends of the Earth
FREE CHILDREN'S AREA
We are delighted to welcome back Tinka, the puppeteer, who will be doing a free storytelling performance and workshop for 2-5 year olds. The performance is called The Apple and is told using characters made from clay and natural materials. In the workshop that follows the children will make their own characters which will then have a role in an improvised storytelling.
The session will begin at 12.15 and last approximately 1 hour. Children need to be accompanied by an adult.
Places are limited, so booking is advisable. You can only book on the day (from 11.00am) please just come and find us at the Children’s Area.
Our popular apple games will, of course, be out again this year and we welcome small children and their adults to enjoy gentle play together.
Items for sale in the children's area can be paid for with a card, but cash is always welcome.
ATTENTION ALL CAKEMAKERS!
We would be delighted to sell your home made cake on Fruit Day, all proceeds are donated to worthwhile causes. This year we are hoping to increase the number of gluten free or vegan cakes on sale, so if you are able to make one, thank you. You can of course freeze fruit or cakes in advance of the day.
To donate a cake, please bring it to St Marks church hall on Fruit Day between 9 -11am. Please ensure that you include a list of all ingredients. If you have any questions or need fruit for your cake please contact Rosie using the link below.
Contact Rosie
APPLE & DAMSON UPSIDE DOWN CAKE RECIPE
This year we have been including successful recipes suggested by volunteers in our newsletters. A delicious recipe for Apple and damson upside down cake is at the end of the newsletter.
CAN YOU DONATE A PLANT?
A much loved feature of Fruit Day is our plant stall, with a wide selection of carefully tended plants.
If you have a garden plant to donate please bring it along on the day, ensuring that your plant is carefully labelled so that we know what it is.
DONATE FRUIT
If you have fruit to donate from trees in your garden please get in touch using the link below. Our volunteers pick fruit right across the borough. All fruit is put to good use, whether as a donation to local causes or to make produce for Fruit Day.
If you have your own car and would like to help with distributing fruit, please get in touch.
Donate fruit
RASPBERRY JAM FOR FRUIT DAY
Plentiful raspberries mean that this year we will have a good supply of raspberry jam on sale at Fruit Day. As you can see in the pictures below, our jam makers have been busy!
OUR NEXT NEWSLETTER
Our next newsletter will be in August, but do get in touch if you have any feedback.
Best wishes and sincere thanks from us all,
Juliet and the team at Abundance Wimbledon.
p.s. You can find all our past newsletter issues here, and if you're not already subscribed, you can subscribe here. You can also find us on social media: Instagram, X (Twitter), and Facebook.
APPLE & DAMSON UPSIDE DOWN CAKE
A delicious cake using fruit from your garden. Damsons could, of course, be substituted with other plum varieties.
Prep time: 20 mins Cooking time: 1 hour
Ingredients
- 400g damsons
- 250g unsalted butter, softened
- 50g demerara sugar
- 150g soft dark brown sugar
- 2 eggs
- 225g self-raising flour
- 1½ tsp mixed spice
- 3 apples, peeled, cored and grated
Method
- Preheat your oven to 190°C / Gas 5.
- Halve the damsons and remove the stones.
- Line a 24cm loose-bottomed non-stick cake tin with baking parchment.
- Spread 50g of the butter over the bottom and evenly sprinkle the demerara sugar over. Place the damsons on top, cut-side down, in an even pattern.
- Whisk the sugar and remaining butter together until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time.
- Add the flour, spices and grated apple. Gently fold everything together, until they are just combined.
- Pour the mix over the damsons in the tin and gently level it out with the back of a spoon. Place the tin on a baking tray and bake for about 1 hour, or until a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.
- Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin for 5-10 minutes, then invert onto a plate to cool.
- Serve warm or cool, with cream.
