GardenLend – rescuing neglected gardens

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According to Horticulture Week, “consumers fed up with the credit crunch will look to escape the news blues in 2009 by heading for the garden.”

This is something surely to be welcomed, but what of those who do not have a garden or access to any areas in which they can plant, sow and tend fruit and vegetables?

Aberdeen council is looking at implementing a similar garden sharing scheme to the one in place in Edinburgh and ,as previously noted, council-run garden-sharing schemes are starting to pop up; probably far too slowly for those waiting and eager to start growing their own.

One of the problems of such municipal set-ups is the amount of bureaucracy involved: by the time any authority has stumbled across the idea, run it “up the flag pole”, got it considered at a council meeting, thought a bit further, paid some consultants a ridiculous amount of money to agree the bleeding obvious, reported back and even got half-way started implementing the project, several seasons and vast amounts of tax payers’ money has been wasted.

Monitoring will no doubt play a large part in any such schemes, adding additional layers of bureaucracy to an essentially simple idea, thereby causing further waste and delays.  If anyone has had any experience of council-run initiatives, the thought of them running on time or budget, smoothly or efficiently, without invasive interference, is at best a pipe-dream.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s “LandShare” project may encounter some of these problems; another that springs to mind is to which any “Guerrilla Gardening” operation is prey: namely that such “abandoned” or under-used plots of land that may be considered “up for grabs” need to have “designated guerrllas” else anyone could end up tending and – possibly more importantly – harvesting the fruits of another’s labours.  To circumvent this, “guerrlla police” will be required or perhaps the formation of a quango such as “OffMyLawn” or “OffPlot”, further adding layers of officialdom to what should be a community-led scheme of private agreements between growers and land-owners.

Hopefully, GardenLend, being a series of private arrangements between those with and those wanting space to grow food and plants, should not fall victim to these particular problems.

That said, all these initiatives are worthy and welcome in their own right: the more such projects and new ways of sharing the limited resources for the greatest good of the most people is surely in the interests of all.  Your thoughts – as ever – are warmly welcomed.

To end on a high note and to quote the mighty Zim: “It’s a wonder we can even feed ourselves”

Sources:

http://www.hortweek.com/channel/GardenRetail/article/870554/Consumers-will-head-garden-2009-says-HTA-president/

http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1016164?UserKey=

http://www.bobdylan.com/#/songs/idiot-wind

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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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