Losing the plot: the fight is on to save our green and pleasant allotments

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/may/17/allotments-threat-housing-cities-green-spaces

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Susie Geraghty, in her scissored-down wellingtons, fleece gilet and flowery cotton gloves, looks every bit the retired woman engrossed in that very British hobby, gardening. But, as she sows her summer cabbages kneeling on a folded magazine, she says she feels more like an endangered species.

“You hear about allotments going, up and down the country, so it’s always a worry. There is such pressure on land, schools selling off their playing fields, and of course the councils must have an eye on allotments: it’s prime space for housebuilding and we all know there is such a desperate need for houses, especially here in the south-east.”

Geraghty doesn’t want me to say where the allotment is – on the south coast – because she is not registered for the plot but working it for her daughter, and the business of renting allotments is a deeply serious one. “Oh, I’d hate to lose it if they didn’t approve: the waiting lists are so long – years and years – and my daughter hasn’t time really. She loves coming here when she can, but really it’s mine now and I’ve put so much into it. It feeds me and plenty more! They’re very strict. There’s always a beady eye on you because the waiting lists are so high, and everyone has a friend or a neighbour that’s waiting for one. So it’s zero tolerance if you’re not dedicated and spick and span!”

There is a busy A-road just outside the entrance, but once inside the high metal gates – where the padlock codes are changed every month – the noise is of birdsong and squeaky wheelbarrows. The allotment holders have an association and a shop and the few people around greet each other warmly as they potter around in the spring sunshine. A middle-aged man wrestling with a new plastic water butt said: “It’s like stress relief. I can’t imagine life without it now. Who needs a gym membership?”

When gardener and former Observer columnist Monty Don called last week for an “allotment revival” in the UK, he was speaking to the converted, feeding into a trend that is already expanding quickly. It has brought a spike in demand for allotments and already many councils have been cutting the size of the plots to squeeze in more enthusiasts.

An estimated 350,000 people in Britain have allotments, with more than 800,000 on waiting lists. But as their popularity rises, the pressure on councils to release brownfield land for building is also increasing. Already two pressure groups have sprung up to help fight the trend, Save All Allotments and Don’t Lose the Plot, alongside the work being done by the British Allotment Society, which takes several calls a week from worried gardeners who fear their little plot might be taken away. When the land is council-owned there is a statutory duty to find another site but it means starting again, often far away and in poorer soil, for many people who will have spent years building up plots and friendships. For private landowners there is only the duty to give a year’s notice.

Don, 59, is concerned that the arrival of generation rent, thanks to rocketing house prices and lack of space for new homes to be built with gardens, many people are not getting the opportunity to grow their own food. “My generation grew up expecting some sort of ownership and access to gardens. I had my first home aged 26 and started growing things then. My three kids are in their twenties and none of them rent or own homes with gardens. A generation is growing up with no access to green space. There’s an increased remoteness about it all. Gardens can reach into life in a way that’s beyond horticulture,’ he said.

“We’ve lost so many of our allotments, and it’s a tragedy. They’re increasingly important as young people have less access to gardens. They’re part of our way of life and we can’t keep building on them.”

Before this week’s Chelsea flower show, which Don is covering for the BBC, he said: “Councils are selling them off and say they’ll find allotment space somewhere else, but this is missing the point. Allotments are supposed to be in the centre of things. They unite people of different ages, diverse backgrounds.”

For the past few years the grow-your-own trend has been spreading like Japanese knotweed. Even as DIY has waned as a hobby, gardening has exploded and sales of vegetable seeds are exceeding the sales of flower seeds in the UK for the first time since the second world war. Vegetables account for almost 80% of sales of seeds and plants compared to 30% in the 1990s.

Even the pushed-for-space householder can buy tumbler tomatoes or alpine strawberries that can grow down from a hanging basket. And the Incredible Edible project at Todmorden in Yorkshire inspired other towns when residents began pulling out the ornamental shrubs in public places and replacing them with herbs, vegetables and fruit trees. There has been a huge surge, too, of people scavenging parks, woods and hedgerows for wild edible plants such as garlic, elderflower and berries.

“They’re about community, communication, producing food and doing it alongside each other,” said Don. “They’re a paradigm of a successful society. We should treasure them. There’s a mental and social factor to be taken into account when urban people have no access to gardens.”

His plea comes at a time when several sites are under threat. Sara Jane Trebar from Farm Terrace allotments in Watford, Hertfordshire, has been among those fighting since 2009 to stop her local authority handing over the site to builders of 68 houses and a car park for Watford football club. The case has been in and out of court and the office of the secretary of state for local government. Last October the allotment holders thought they had won a landmark victory to overturn the decision by Eric Pickles, then secretary of state, in favour of the council, but they have just found out that Watford borough council is to appeal again.

“There’s so much pressure to build, build, build,” said Trebar. “Our allotments have been here since 1896. It’s been harrowing that just as we’re seeing this green surge, with people wanting to grow things in their own space, that local authorities are starting to get rid of them. It’s happening more and more to people. It’s very sad, especially at a time when food banks are at an all-time high.”

A freedom of information request by the Save All Allotments campaigners found that, between 2007 and 2014, 194 out of 198 applications to close allotments were granted by the secretary of state. The Department for Communities and Local Government has said that 2,000 new allotment places were created in the past few years but has no figures for how many have been lost.

Di Appleyard of the National Allotment Society said that, as people are ending up with smaller and smaller gardens, allotments have never been more vital. “They are wonderful for mental health, for creating community, but there is a problem in that it’s the right to grow that is protected by statute, so if a council wants a bit of land it really doesn’t have to take account of the community there.

“But a lot of councils are respecting their allotments and not trying to get rid of them despite the pressures,” she said. She added that the once traditional “allotment officer” post was mostly disappearing, leaving many allotments unmanaged, while other councils were raising rents.

“Allotments are of course vulnerable with the pressure on urban space increasing,” Appleyard said. “But there are ways to fight back and things people can do. People power is an impressive thing.”

GROW YOUR OWN

■ During the Dig for Victory days of the 1940s, Britain had 1.5m allotments.

■ The austere years of the 1970s saw another surge of grow-your-own.

■ Beans are said to be the most popular homegrown vegetables, while about 10% of strawberries and raspberries are homegrown, along with 7% of potatoes.

■ In 1908 the Small Holdings and Allotments Act placed a duty on local authorities to provide sufficient allotments, according to demand. The rights of allotmenteers in England and Wales were strengthened with the Allotments Act of 1925, which established statutory allotments that local authorities could not sell without ministerial consent.

■ Thirty minutes of allotment gardening burns about 150 calories, the same as low-impact aerobics, according to the British Allotment Society.

■ An allotment is traditionally measured in “rods” or “poles”, a measurement from Anglo-Saxon times. Ten poles is the accepted size of a plot, equal to 250 square metres. Recent “plot chopping” by councils to accommodate rising demand has been controversial.