We are a handful of people who play lawn bowls on a public park green in south London from April to September, and these notes are how we remember what the green has taught us.

Moss Lawn Bowls is not a club. There are no members, no committee and no league fixtures, only a group of between six and ten people who turn up at the same council green in a south London park on Saturday afternoons and on one or two weekday evenings through the season. We started in the summer of 2022, when three of us who had watched the green from the railings for years finally went in and asked the groundsman how it was played.

The name comes from the corner of the green nearest the pavilion, where the hedge keeps the grass shaded and damp enough that a little moss creeps in each spring before the groundsman gets to it. It is the slowest part of the green and the part everybody grumbles about, and it seemed the right thing to name ourselves after.

These notes are written by one of the group, with help and corrections from the others. They cover what we have learned about the green, the bowls and the weather, and about helping new people get started. We do not name the park, the people who play with us or anyone who works there. None of it is advice from a qualified coach; it is what a group of amateurs noticed over a few seasons of Saturdays.