National Trust Allotment anyone?

Well the news this weekend is that the great and the good are being asked to turn over some ‘spare’ land to help families grow fruit and veg. Tim Smit, founder of the Eden project, has thrown his support behind the scheme which has a twofold focus of improving health and cutting carbon emissions from food imports.

Forgive me if I sound just a bit jaundiced about this. The National Trust is ‘donating’ 1,000 plots of its own land. 1,000 plots. Right.

We’ve got over 300 plots on our allotment site alone. Our waiting list is about four years long, even with us dividing standard plots in two. 1,000 plots. That’s not even a drop in the ocean – it’s paltry. Nice word, paltry. I should use it more often.

Those nice folks at British Waterways, who manage the UK canal network, are also giving some land (funnily enough they are also giving allotment land to the 2012 allotment creation initiative being run by London Mayor, Boris Johnson, hope it’s not the same plots being counted twice) and even turning some barges into floating gardens apparently, and Tesco, B&Q and Suttons are giving free plants and seeds.

But back to the National Trust – it’s created plots at 40 of its sites, which will become available over the next three years via the campaign’s website, Eat Seasonably

Now I've got the hang of this - 40 plots over three years is 13 plots a year, so we should have all 1,000 by ...2085. Hurrah!

The website will also have “veg doctors” drawn from the 390,000 members of the Royal Horticultural Society and Garden Organic who will give advice to the plot holders: that should be fun, giving 39 experts per NT plot – nobody should be short of advice then, even if they’re a bit short of places to put it into action. And for folk unable to obtain proper allotments (ie most of the population) those experts will be able to help you turn window sills, terraces or urns into vegetable patches. Urns. Sounds like we’re expected to invade the local funeral director’s office and fill his memorial pots with sunflower seeds.

In other news, our kale is off to a roaring start and it is just possible I got out of bed in a bad mood this morning – normal sunny service will be resumed as soon as I’ve had some toast and honey.

Labels: allotment-kale, allotment-waiting-list, garden organic, national-trust-allotment, royal horticultural society