Our first gardening date had quite an impact. It was a working weekend with Chug volunteers. They stripped the rust off the allotment and painted it white. Well done all it looks amazing.
Planned over the next few weeks; Duck house and duck area being built for our imminent arrivals – seven White Campbell ducks, willow trellis for the allotment; some children to come down and decorate the floating barge.
Please contact if you would like to get involved in any of our schemes.
This year we will be opening our Cafe again!
We will be selling tea and coffee, cakes and other sweet treats. We will also be holding workshops and other events.
The profits from the cafe will go to our project Greening Kingsland Basin.
We want to set up a community orchard, plant wildflowers, marginal pond plants and water lilies to attract all the birds that have disappeared due to the development over the last 5 years.
We are also trying to make and plant floating planters and nesting areas for waterfowl.
Oh to be in the Floating Allotment in the Summer Time
The Cafe will be open from 12 Noon to 5 Pm
The dates are as Follows:
15 June: Cafe
Workshop: How to save a baby’s life
lifesaving and CPR.
20 July – Cafe
Workshop to be announced
17 August -Cafe
Constructing growing screens
floating planters how to make and construction day.
21 and 22 September – Cafe
Open House London – open boats
19 October – Cafe
How to make your own soap and why it’s better than the soap from shops
So if it’s just to come and have a cup of tea and read the newspapers or look at the floating allotment or our bees. We welcome you throughout the summer.
Look forward to seeing you here!
Chug commissioned a bat survey of Kingsland Basin in 2012, to discover more about our local bat population.
Here it is for all to see:
ASW_batsurvey_173-1
Courtesy of the RSPB:
Pipistrelle bat
Mammal
Pipistrellus pipistrellus
Pipistrelles are tiny bats with reddish-brown coats and blackish-brown ears, nose and wing membranes. They are common throughout Britain. Like other bats, pipistrelles are nocturnal. They emerge at dusk to feed for a couple of hours before returning to their roosts.
In the winter they hibernate in trees and buildings. In the summer they use trees, buildings and bat boxes to roost. Pipistrelles are agile, fast fliers.
During the breeding season males defend a territory, Females visit these territories and after mating give birth in June and July, usually to a single baby. Bats are mammals and feed their young milk. After about three or four weeks the young bats are able to fly and leave the roosts in August.
IMPORTANT: if you find a sick or ailing bat, you should not approach or handle the animal but seek advice from the Bat Conservation Trust.
What does it eat?
Small insects, such as moths and gnats. A single pipistrelle can eat 3,000 gnats in one night.
When will I see it?
At dusk and during the night from April until September.
Where will I see it?
Flying throughout the garden at night. Also in parks, open woodland, marshes, farmland and urban areas.
Posted on October 24, 2012
Anyone who has been to one of our fundraising events recently – this is where some of the tea-and-cake cash has gone. CHUG recently bought some new pontoons to join together the moorings on the two sides of the basin, and volunteers spent the day collecting them and putting them together, with the aid of a leaky drysuit and a lot of trial and error.
Joining the two sides is important because at the moment the moorings are cut off from the canal towpath – access to the basin is through the new development on Kingsland Rd. This makes it impossible to hold events that draw people in off the towpath, like last year’s hugely successful cafe that ran every weekend throughout June, July and August.
It will be another few months before the development on the southwest corner of the basin will be finished, and the towpath access will be open again. Keep an eye on the website, sign up for our newsletters (bottom right of the homepage), or like us on Facebook to find out about events coming up.
Posted on September 13, 2012
The CHUG allotment featured in the Evening Standard on the 12th of September, 2012. They caught wind of our allotment project and their Homes and Property section got in touch and interviewed CHUG’s Val Easty, top allotmenteer.
The article goes into detail about the choice of veg we grow – ‘cut-and-come-again’ crops like spinach, salad leaves and raspberries, rather than one-offs that wouldn’t go around all of the basin dwellers. They were also interested in the drainage of what is effectively a giant container garden, the difficulties we had along the way, the sad demise of the duck population and the introduction of worms to the allotment.
Read all about it…
