GardenLend

Story by Laura Jones of the Evening Leader

“HOMEOWNERS in a Flintshire village are being asked to give up parts of their gardens to meet the soaring demand for allotments … Flintshire county councillor Klaus Armstrong-Braun has backed the idea, saying that local authorities are legally obliged, to provide allotments and also that more urban land should be allocated for ‘agricultural’ use, adding “People using gardens as allotments is a win-win situation.”

from http://www.eveningleader.co.uk/news/Flintshire-councillor-backs-39give-up.4632052.jp#3377934

This is a brilliant idea - one that my wife and I have been expounding for some time.  At the end of June, I contacted the Wrexham Leader in response to the rise in food prices push up demand for Wrexham’s allotments.

Nearly 4 months ago, I said

“According to Matt Sims of the Wrexham Leader, demand is soaring for allotments in Wrexham as rising food prices, growing concerns over food miles and demand for organic produce prompts a new generation to grow their own. http://www.wrexhamleader.co.uk/news/Rising-food-prices-push-up.4219320.jp

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.  Couldn’t be simpler and avoids all the waiting involved with local authorities coming to a decision.

Please register at http://find.gardenlend.co.uk/ucp.php?mode=register and take the first steps towards your green dream.”

Quoted from:
http://blog.gardenlend.co.uk/2008/06/29/rising-food-prices-push-up-demand-for-wrexhams-allotments/

Similar voluntary schemes are taking off in Totnes, parts of London and are being discussed in Transition Towns.  Surely Wrexham is ideally placed to take the lead in Wales?

Will keep you all posted of developments; why not get on to your own council to see if such a scheme would take off in your area?

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From the Harborough Mail 15th September 2008
http://www.harboroughmail.co.uk/news/39Stay-of-execution39for-allotment-holders.4479046.jp

‘Stay of execution’ for allotment holders  

Summary

“ALLOTMENT holders in Lutterworth have been given a reprieve in their fight to keep their De Verdon Road plots. Harborough District Council was due on Monday to decide whether or not to buy land in Moorbarns Lane as a replacement site for the allotments. The district council has an option to buy the Moorbarns Lane site but this is due to expire on September 20.

Cllr Alistair Swatridge, who was elected leader of Harborough District Council at Monday’s meeting, said: “My personal feeling is that council would be wrong to recommend the purchase of land without first obtaining planning permission.

Cllr Swatridge added that there could be a considerable risk to the authority if the De Verdon Road site failed to earn planning permission.  Other town councillors pointed out that Lutterworth Town Council had not paid its rent for the forthcoming year and allotment holders could be ‘kicked off’ the plot at any time.

Town councillors agreed to defer any more decisions on the allotment until their October meeting.”

A meeting that will occur after the option to buy the Moorbarns Lane site has expired.  Does anyone else spot a fait accompli in preparation?  Is this another example of greed over sustainability or just plain old ineptitude?

With the housing market in free-fall, ripping up prized allotments for ill-advised property development does seem short sighted.  What is wrong with buying up the land in Moorbarns Lane for housing, rather than forcing the allotment holders to start their horticultural efforts from scratch? Apart from the A4303, a school and a lorry park?

Your thoughts, as ever, are gratefully appreciated.

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  “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?

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According to Matt Sims of the Wrexham Leader, demand is soaring for allotments in Wrexham as rising food prices, growing concerns over food miles and demand for organic produce prompts a new generation to grow their own. http://www.wrexhamleader.co.uk/news/Rising-food-prices-push-up.4219320.jp

With no allotments in the whole of Caia Park, where a quarter of Wrexham’s population lives, surely some alternative arrangements must be made.

With local councillors launching a consultation to find out how many people in the area would like an allotment, the process could take forever.  Even though there was an election pledge to provide allotments and there is local demand for space for growing fruit and vegetables, persuading the council to allocate land, finding and identifying the right land and getting the project off the ground looks set to get bogged down in bureaucracy.  Meanwhile, residents of Caia Park, Wrexham, Wales and beyond are left in limbo.

According to recent figures released by the Local Government Association, more than 200,000 allotments have been lost over the past 30 years in the UK despite demand having never been greater.  Presumably, the land has been turned over to unaffordable housing, which is not much use when one cannot afford the mortgage or to feed oneself; that is another matter for further discussion.

If you are planning on growing your own to survive the credit crunch or waiting in an endless line to get an allotment, why not join GardenLend?  We also need those with gardens that are not in use to join, to provide space for the keen but landless growers.

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.  Couldn’t be simpler and avoids all the waiting involved with local authorities coming to a decision.

Please register at http://find.gardenlend.co.uk/ucp.php?mode=register and take the first steps towards your green dream.

Message threads for Wrexham have been set up at
http://find.gardenlend.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=7  for Gardeners and

http://find.gardenlend.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=8 for Garden Owners

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 According to yesterday’s Evening Standard, a “Third of all new homes being built on gardens” and the “Number of homes built on gardens doubles in just 10 years“  Given the global environmental, ecological and economic downturn, forthcoming plummeting property prices and the needs of growing plants for food and material use, along with the concomitant reduction in carbon dioxide, this surely seems to be reckless folly of the first order.

It is as though Eddie Izzard’s Anglican Inquisition has started up - “Cake, or death?” - and we have chosen the latter option.  Those voting for such a mass suicide, kindly leave out the rest of us.

Back to our chickens, however.  Given that concreting over what little remaining green space (no, it is not brownfield - that is specious sophistry worthy only of the most cynical) remains is a bad idea, what are we to do about it?  Short of ripping down the new developments (another bad idea, but not without some merit), we can at least stop such further plunder of the limited space that we have and more sensibly use that which remains for the growth and production of fruit, vegetables and flowers.  As such space is, now by definition, somewhat limited and so - short of an agrarian revolution - we must endeavour to use best and most wisely what we still have.

Gardens, communal spaces, balconies, roofs, window boxes and window sills are ideal places for planting things - another given, I think.  For those of us not lucky to have many, much or any of these, there are allotments, the uptake of which is steadily increasing, after the slump during which it seemed that only pre-prepared tasteless mush, irradiated out-of-season forced vegetables and other increasingly expensive “conveniences” were considered acceptable sustenance.

There are, I hear the more observant amongst you collectively cry, still quite a few gaps in the provision and availability of space for horticultural use.  Three solutions spring to mind:

• Join GardenLend.co.uk and either find a frustrated gardener willing to help with your garden, or look for a garden that needs help.  Membership is free and relatively easy to join  There are few restrictions, outside of the usual ones regarding legality, privacy, common sense, taste, decency, good manners and appropriateness.  Donations, however, are gratefully accepted.
• Make greater use of farmers’ markets and similar collective horticultural mercantile activity.  I recently came across the South London food cooperative FareShares who are “a non-profit-making voluntary project that stocks simple unadulterated food (often called wholefoods) and related products. It was set up to relieve hardship among local people by providing good food at affordable prices and in the belief that decent food is a basic necessity for health, regardless of means” and “supports patterns of consumption that promote the causes of social justice and sustainable agriculture and foster awareness of the political and ecological effects of consumer actions.”  If you don’t have something like this near you, why not try to start one?
• Take matters a little more into your own hands, read how David Tracey came up with “Guerrilla Gardening” (available from our shop - we too must make some money somehow) where “modern-day Johnny Appleseeds perform random acts of gardening” and contains tips for effective involvement.  Also available is “On Guerrilla Gardening: A Handbook for Gardening Without Boundaries” Packed with photographs, anecdotes and sound horticultural advice, it is an irresistible invitation to shoulder your shovel and to join the revolution that is blooming in the world’s shared spaces.
• I know, this is more than 3, just one last plug - “Food for Free” by Richard Mabey is an essential, pocket-sized, forager’s guidebook.  Published by Collins GEM, this ‘Fantastic Feast of Plants and Folklore’ ranks alongside Mrs Beeton and the Enc. Brit. (imho) - no modern home should be without one.

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World food prices soar while you have an unproductive garden - does this make sense?  With allotments as rare as hen’s teeth these days, why not turn your garden into one?  Can’t be bothered or have no time? Join GardenLend and meet up with gardeners with no place to garden IN YOUR AREA and then you can both benefit from what your garden can produce.  With the economy in a downward spiral and food prices rising, doesn’t it make sense to maximize the value of your home by turning your plot into an old-fashioned kitchen garden?  You can grow fruit, vegetables and herbs - saving money and getting better quality than you can from supermarkets.  Your carbon footprint will be down and your feelgood factor up.  You can grow the basics that you use every day, or expensive produce like asparagus that will soon be even more of a treat than you’d like.  Join GardenLend and get growing.  Find a garden or a gardener on our site.  Help save the planet and your money too!

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