The end of an era was how my friend Christian described it this week when I announced that I would be giving up my allotment
As you may know we’re going to be moving house in the not too distant future, and as a result moving out of the area that means I can’t keep the allotment. I could probably keep it for another year, but the house that we hope to be moving to has quite a big garden and that would mean the upkeep of both, and a substantial commute every time I wanted to visit the allotment. So I’ve decided to give it up at the end of October when the new fees are due. This week I started clearing out my shed and tidying up things a little bit for whoever is going to take it on after me.
It is a little bit tinged with sadness as I have had that plot for over 14 years and taken it from a desolate, weed covered patch to something productive that has provided a considerable amount of fruit and veg for our family over those years. It also become a place of solace for me, where I retreated to when I needed to think. It was a place of contemplation and meditation for me, and where I thought about many problems and solved most of them too. I will miss it.
But it is only a stage in my gardening story. I regularly give talks on growing vegetables and other allotment and garden type tales, I like to tell stories. Almost all of these are to complete strangers, so naturally I introduce myself and tell a little of my gardening story.
I started young. Around about three years old.
I was encouraged by my Dad and my Grandad.
I had one of those packets of seeds that you can get for kids that has an assortment of things that are “easy” to grow - carrots, peas, pumpkins, beans - and a patch of ground in my parents garden.
My parents taught me how to plant those seeds, grow the plants and harvest the veg. They also taught me how to save seed, and over time how to grow just about everything.
As I grew older there were times when I didn’t have much space for growing things because I didn’t have a garden as such, but I still managed a grobag with tomatoes here, a pot of herbs on a windowsill there. When I wasn’t able to grow vegetables, I had house plants.
Then in time I took on my allotment. When I took it on, it was a bit neglected and riddled with creeping buttercup. I was told I had three months in which I had to dig over the whole plot and if I could do that then it was mine to keep for as long as I wanted it and looked after it. I managed to do it in two. Working every Saturday and Sunday, hampered by the wettest couple of months I can remember, but by the time I was done, I had my first plants in - runner beans and courgettes and grand plans for the rest of the plot.
Over time I put up a shed - something I wished I had in the first weeks when it was raining and I had nowhere to shelter to drink a coffee. Well the shed was actually the best parts of two sheds put together, and whoever gets the plot after me will inherit that shed, hopefully it will give them shelter in their first months.
I think the allotment has also made me a better cook. When you have a ready supply of fruit and veg you have to learn to deal with gluts (too much of one thing all at the same time), without driving your family to distraction by constantly serving the same meals / veg. So being able to be creative as well as learning how to preserve things, and make jams and chutneys and all sorts of other ways to use what you have when you have it, without necessarily eating it there and then.
So yes it is the end of an era, and almost a third of my lifetime has been occupied with my allotment. I’m looking forward to starting somewhere new, although I’m not looking forward to starting from scratch again quite as much as I did all those years ago when I first took on the plot. I have plans though, things that I wasn’t able to do for practical reasons on the allotment that I think I can do in the new garden. So there’ll be new things to learn as well as using the lessons built up over the years and more vegetables and fruit.
Thanks for reading.