Canbury Gardens
Canbury Gardens is the park at the heart of the CARA area. The park and the facilities within it are popular and well used by local residents and visitors. The facilities include a small children’s play area, a bandstand which has a concert each Sunday in the summer, the Canbury Secret café (April to December), picnic tables, The Boaters Inn, open areas for informal games, a multi-pupose all-weather sports pitch and - for more formal sports - public tennis courts, a tennis club (Kingston Riverside Club) and Kingston Rowing Club.
CARA supports the Friends of Canbury Gardens, and their 'Saturday morning Gardeners' - volunteers who will welcome your involvement (which can be regular or occasional, or on other days, whatever best suits you.
Also for gardening enthusiasts there is Canbury Community Garden in the former gardeners’ yard, and there is Canbury Pavilion, a community resource which you can use for parties or to host a regular class or gathering.
Canbury Gardens is Metropolitan Open Land (MOL) which gives it some added protection.
Canbury Gardens Working Group
A CARA representative sits on Canbury Gardens Working Group, which considers how the Gardens are maintained and major improvement projects.
From time to time CARA organises events and projects to enhance Canbury Gardens, and works with the Friends of Canbury Gardens supporting activities such as bulb planting or litter-picking. CARA has links to other groups that seek to protect and enhance green spaces.
Thames Landscape Strategy has been organising and managing projects to enhance and maintain the environment along the local stretch of the Thames for well over 20 years, undertaking a variety of work in CARA area.
You may have seen the Annual Scrub Cutting on the riverbank past Canbury Gardens, along Lower Ham Road and past the Half Mile Tree, which is managed by the TLS, using the Swingbridge volunteers and their barge.
A TLS project was responsible for the information display about testing Sopwith float-planes on the river beside Canbury Gardens. It stands just inside the north entrance to the gardens.
CARA works closely with the TLS and has a representative on their Community Advisory Group. The management structure of the TLS includes a Kingston Councillor and Officer. A TLS employee is a member of the Canbury Gardens Working Group.