Community

Chiswick Horticultural Society is for all who enjoy growing plants in their gardens, allotments, conservatories, or in containers.

There is a trading hut where you can buy plants and gardening supplies at discounted prices and meet for gardening advice and informative talks and they organise summer and autumn flower shows, visits to places of horticultural excellence, and social events.

Plot sizes are measured in rods, an old Anglo-Saxon unit so-called because it was the length of the rod used to control a team of oxen. A rod is 5.5 yards (5.03 metres).

There are 4 rods in a chain, that is 22 yards (20.12 metres).

There are 10 chains in a furlong and 8 furlongs in a mile. So a mile is 80 x 22 = 1760 yards (1609.3 metres).

An acre is the area of land that could be ploughed in a day, being a furrow long (furlong) and a chain wide, or 160 square rods, which is 4840 sq yards (4048 sq metres). A hectare is 10,000 sq metres so an acre is 0.4 of a hectare.

Plots sizes are usually 5 rods or 10 rods. A 10 rod allotment is actually 10 square rods in area, that is 10 x 5.5 x 5.5 = 302.5 sq yards (253 sq metres).

In metric units, a 10 rod allotment is one fortieth of a hectare: in imperial units it is one sixteenth of an acre.