“National Allotments Week is promoting awareness of allotments and encouraging municipalities to provide more land for them. This is important because one of the big problems is that many of the sites used to be on the outskirts of towns, on unwanted land. As cities expanded, many of the sites have become prime development locations and are being lost. Councils may offer alternatives, but they are even farther away and require back breaking work to make the soil good and fertile. Last year a century old allotment garden was demolished for the London Olympic site and the replacement land turned out to be clay soil in a water-logged valley.”
From http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/08/national-allotment-gardens-week.php
Sounds a bit like Charlton Athletic’s pitch, but on to a more serious note:
Some of the problems faced by potential allotment owners are: the lack of allotments and the long waiting lists, often as land has been earmarked for housing development, often some years off; councils and unitary authorities selling off allotments; the poor quality of land - usually areas that no-one else would touch except for dumping rubble.
The simplest solution seems to be turning over your garden to fruit and vegetable production.
This raises 2 possible problems; both readily resolvable:
What if you do not have any suitable green space or are unable for whatever reason to cultivate the land that you do have?
Simple answer: join GardenLend.
The scheme - although online - is locally based and led, based on need and availability. People wanting garden space to grow fruit and vegetables register their desire so to do, giving brief details of their aims and ambitions. Others, with gardens that are underused or neglected, post the details of the land they have that could be turned over to more productive use. Either by browsing the lists or by replying to details posted, the two then contact each other - firstly online - and, should they want to take matters further, arrange the finer details, including share of produce and take matters from there.
Please register at http://find.gardenlend.co.uk/ucp.php?mode=register and take the first steps towards your green dream.
It couldn’t be simpler and avoids all the waiting involved with local authorities coming to a decision about allocation of dwindling land resources and you get to do exactly what you want without the bureaucratic red tape and regulations of pettifogging officials - what could be better?
