The rise of the allotment

All over Britain people are getting their spades out and Digging for Sustainability!

There’s something in the air. All over the UK people are reaching for their gardening forks and their wellies and digging for victory. Allotment gardening in the UK is booming, leaving 100,000 people on the waiting list for a plot. Allotments allow individuals and groups to rent a patch of land to grow their own produce, commune with nature, and enjoy the fresh air for a welcome change of pace in their busy lives.

In the early 1900s there were over 1.5 million plots in the UK. However this has dropped to an all time low with only 245,000 plots today Between wanting to save money, reducing the amount of food miles in the diet, and simply wanting to grow your own vegetables, there is up to a 10 year waiting list for allotments in some parts of the country.

Allotment schemes are springing up all over Britain. Most are legal, some are not. Incredible Edible Todmorden began as an offshoot of the guerrilla gardening movement, which encourages people to reclaim unkempt public spaces by planting them with flowers, herbs and vegetables; often under cover of darkness and without permission. Their aim is to make their town self-sufficient in vegetables by 2018. The whole town has embraced the scheme enthusiastically and people are trying to find new places to grow their vegs: from herb planters on station platforms to cherry trees outside a supermarket. Raised beds and polytunnels are being put in at schools and fruit bushes and trees are being planted in a community orchard on newly cleared woodland.

In other parts of the country British Waterways (which controls 2200 miles of waterways/canals) plans to open up unused areas of waterfront properties to vegetable allotments, even using retired canal workboats as floating gardens. The British Waterways scheme is part of the Capital Growth project launched by the London mayor Boris Johnson and his food adviser Rosie Boycott, which aims to create 2,012 new plots by 2012. Network Rail already supports community groups who spruce up disused land it owns around stations, and plans to extend the scheme to create vegetable gardens following a successful trial in Bristol.

In a similar vein, the National Trust is also pushing to develop over a thousand new allotments in the next three years. This will enable local communities to grow their own food on National Trust land. They estimate that the new plots could produce up to 2.6 million lettuces per year, or 50,000 sacks of potatoes or other produce worth up to an estimated £1.5 million. That’s no small potatoes!