Clay and tadpoles

We had a really busy afternoon on Sunday, as illustrated by these photos:

Pond-dippping

Tadpoles!

Building the cob hearth

Cob hearth nearly complete

As our new gate is halfway installed now, we were able to put up the main sign (created last summer) and noticeboard

Next session is Sunday 26th April, 2pm-4pm. Forest School taster session for children, and adults can help us plant out various new plants behind the pond.

Reserve open this Sunday (March 15)!

It's spring at Galleywall!

We're still finalising the calendar of events for the year, but to start off with we are opening the reserve this coming Sunday (March 15th) for a general maintenance session and to plant some new plants on the slope behind the pond.

Come and enjoy the peace and quiet and find out some of our plans for the year, including a cob hearth building event (12th April), the Big Lunch (7th June), and permaculture and plant identification sessions.                                            

It would be great to see you this coming Sunday - just turn up between 1.30 and 3.30pm.

Skills Exchange at Elephant & Castle

HourBank (together with People's Bureau and Time4Southwark) are running a Skills Exchange event in March which looks great:

They say:

"Wander round our stalls, pick up some new skills, get something fixed, and have some fun."
Saturday 28th March, 11-4pm, at Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre.

Meanwhile, down on the Nature Reserve, spring is just started to poke its head up... Our first event this year will be Sunday 15th March, when we'll be doing some planting on the bank behind the pond. Watch this space for more information on the rest of the year -- we have lots planned!

Planning meeting, Tue 13th Jan

It would be great if you could come along to our planning meeting for this year which is scheduled for Tuesday January 13th 2015, 7 pm, at City Hope Church ,121 Drummond Road SE16 2JY, just round the corner from the Blue.

2015 at Galleywall Nature Reserve should be  good. We are hoping to install an improved rainwater harvesting system, get our raised beds regularly tended by local people, build a cob hearth and hold more days where children and their families can have fun cooking,  making hot drinks safely, and learning how to build and tend a real campfire.  

In addition we will be extending our habitat wall, applying to the Guinness book of records to be recognised as having the biggest bug hotel in London, improving our permaculture section and growing more wild food. We will be introducing bees to the reserve. 

We hope you can come and help us make these plans a reality. We need your help to open the reserve regularly, and to give us more ideas and build a reliable team to keep the reserve well looked after. DO come along and have your say. 

Winter flowers

Some winter flowers on the nature reserve:

Creeping buttercup (we had lots of this earlier in the year, but a couple of plants are flowering again in the mild weather).

I don't recognise this one, which was growing under the trees by the gate -- any offers?

The Daubenton's Kale is doing well, too, in the permaculture area.

The reserve will be shut now for a couple of months -- see you in the spring!

Permaculture and fungi at Galleywall

Last weekend we had the last of the scheduled 2014 sessions at Galleywall (though there's one extra one -- see below), on Permaculture.

Permaculture is a way of approaching gardening, agriculture, and life sustainably and positively. Check out the Permaculture Principles site (and the previous link to the Permaculture Association) for more information. The drop-in session at the reserve was a lot of fun, and we looked at ways of thinking about permaculture principles, and at some of the permaculture aspects and links of Galleywall.

I also had a look around the reserve and found some cool fungi:

 The bottom ones are ink caps but I'm not sure about the top ones (opinions welcome!).

We'll have one more open afternoon at Galleywall, on Sunday 16th November (1:30-3:30pm) before winter. Nothing particular planned -- we'll be brewing tea over the fire, and will do a bit of end-of-year tidying up. Come along to help or just to drink tea and toast a marshmallow or two!