Looking forward to the other allotmenteers faces when they see I’m setting half of it aside as a wild flower meadow.
I get my allotment on Tuesday
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Musings on the byways of popular culture
One of the reasons I gave up* my allotment, apart from sheer idleness and couldn’t-be-arsedness, was the Harry Enfield only-me geezer next door constantly telling me I was doing it wrong.
*Actually, now I come to think of it, I was kicked off.
“You did not want to do that, Mike….”
Precisely.
“Coming down through the allotment /
Little kingdoms every one /
I saw asparagus today”
It’s not the only track on that album that mentions allotments either.
That’s a quite exquisite tune, @thecheshirecat.
Very other-wordly and meditative. not at all how I’d expect an allotment song to sound.
The rowdy, cider-swigging Surfin Turnips are something of a contrast.
I have a feeling that the Allotment Songbook will be rather slim volume but would be delighted to be proved wrong.
Allotments are popular in many different countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotment_(gardening)
Not least here in Stockholm, where there is a long waiting list to get one.
Here’s an amusing quote from wiki about the origins of Swedish allotments, known as kolonilotter….
In Landskrona, around the area of the Citadel, the first allotment gardens of Sweden were made available for lease in the 1860s,[43] later followed by those in Malmö in 1895, and Stockholm in 1904. The local authorities were inspired by Anna Lindhagen, a social-democratic leader and a woman in the upper ranks of society, who visited allotment gardens in Copenhagen and was delighted by them. In her first book on the topic devoted to the usefulness of allotment gardens she wrote:
For the family, the plot of land is a uniting bond, where all family members can meet in shared work and leisure. The family father, tired with the cramped space at home, may rejoice in taking care of his family in the open air, and feel responsible if the little plot of earth bestows a very special interest upon life.[44]
Anna Lindhagen is said to have met Lenin when he passed through Stockholm from the exile in Switzerland on their return trip to Russia after the February Revolution in 1917.[45] She invited him to the allotment gardens of Barnängen to show all its benefits. However, she did not win his approval. Lenin was totally unresponsive to this kind of activity. To poke in the soil was to prepare the ground for political laziness in the class struggle. The workers should not be occupied with gardening, they should rather devote themselves to the proletarian revolution.
That is such an amusing idea. Lenin taking an afternoon off from the proletarian struggle and visiting a Swedish allotment patch.
This article has some splendid black and white photos.
https://smedbykoloni.se/Koloninshistoria_historiskan.pdf
Back to wiki for some statistics….
The Swedish Federation of Leisure Gardening was founded in 1921 and represents today more than 26,000 allotment and leisure gardeners. The members are organised in about 275 local societies all over Sweden. The land is usually rented from the local authorities.
Here’s the home page of Barnängens Allotments on Södermalm where Lenin is said to have visited..
https://barnangenskoloni.se/
Some excellent photos..
Oooh. Allotments; leisure plots; plotlands. Don’t get me started. One of my favourite rabbitholes.
https://criticalplace.org.uk/2023/07/17/plotlands-the-struggle-for-land-and-affordable-housing/
Don’t hold yourself back, @thecheshirecat.
I’m looking forward to hearing more from you.
That article on plotlands was a real eye-opener.
I was interested to discover that there allotments in the US but they call them community gardens.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_gardening_in_the_United_States
Japan also has them
https://www.nippon.com/en/features/h00206/
In Japan, community gardens, or “shimin nōen” (市民農園) and “tanbo” (田んぼ), are becoming an integral part of urban life.
https://www.jfex.jp/hub/en-gb/blog/japans-food-market/community-gardens-explained.html
It’s a global phenomenon.
https://allotmentpro.com/articles/allotments-around-the-world/
Rio has allotments,
https://www.positive.news/society/the-rio-de-janeiro-garden-that-saves-lives/
The Garota from Ipanema is now the Garota from the Allotaments.
https://atlantika-collective.com/blog/2020/4/3/japans-shimin-noen
It is indeed a global phenomenon. In my travels, these ‘little kingdoms’ catch my eye. They’re easy to spot in the Netherlands and Switzerland, but I’ve come across them in Czechia and France. They clearly meet a basic human need!
I wonder if I will find any in Portugal; I am literally about to walk out of my door to head there.
There certainly are allotments in Portugal. They are called Parques Hortícolas.
https://www.lisboa.pt/temas/ambiente/estrutura-ecologica/parques-horticolas
My dad had an allotment about a mile from our house for a couple of decades. He rented it, 1 pound a year
10p per m2 these days still good value mine is about £25 a year
Amazing
£48 in Birmingham
I miss mine, had one for nearly 20 years but infirmity meant I could no longer give it the attention it needed.
Enjoy.
Hope you are growing some veg….
John Otway & Wild Willy Barret have a word of advice:
Curiously, the next result in the YT search is from a 2011 gig in Cambridge, where I did the sound because my chums The Morning People were the support act.
I trust you are retired with approximately 16 hours free, 7 days a week? Eight of those hours will be taken up by your neighbours explaining in precise detail where you’ve gone wrong. Then there’s the Ancient Ritual of bartering your excess courgettes (two hundred is the standard amount) for next door’s excess cabbages (one hundred is the standard amount).
Enjoy!!
What’s an allotment?
See above: Hubes’ ex is a splendid example.
My dad wanted one for years, as all we had was a concrete yard with a plot of about 4 square yards of earth. The council had a huge area of open land at the bottom of the hill, and you could put your name down for an allotment of land to grow your own veg there. During WW2 it had been a civic duty to Dig For England, and dad wanted to do his bit, decades after hostilities had finished, so he put his name down for a patch. Years went by. The council got strapped for cash by successive government’s financial throttling, and then they sold the whole place off to developers, thereby stealing the promise of plentiful home grown veg from countless generations to come. Bastards.
In Australia they seem to be best known as community gardens or backyard garden ,Junior
https://foragersyear.wordpress.com/2012/09/22/community-gardens-and-allotments-in-australian-cities-the-time-has-come/
I just discovered an Aussie gardening YT Channel, BEAN THERE DUG THAT.
I have to say that I’ve rarely encountered snobbery on my allotment. People seem genuinely keen to know what I’m up to without telling me how I could do it better. If I want some advice they’ll be happy to help.
I’m too thinking of sowing a small area (under my apple trees) with a wildflower seed mix but expect complaints regarding ‘weed’ seeds being spread on adjacent plots. Our allotment committee don’t seem to be a particularly eco-friendly lot which is a bit odd. They’ve recently sent an email around asking for volunteers to help cut back a hedgerow which is overgrowing an adjacent pavement. I’ve had to point out that they shouldn’t be cutting back hedgerows during the bird breeding season. Thankfully they’ve scrapped the idea.
Friend of mine was part of a council community garden some years ago, so I asked her how it worked.
“Brompton community garden had about 30 individual plots approximately 2 x 4m each that you could grow whatever you wanted (within legal reason) and the produce belonged to you. If you had excess you could leave them on a table for others to share if you liked. There were chickens and we had a limited “committee” who were responsible for looking after them, and we’d fill the cartons with eggs for each person to take in an organised schedule. The fundraisers we’d have (like the spring fair) along with the annual fees raised money for the upkeep of paths, compost bays, the shed, and larger tools like shovels and rakes etc.
There are other community gardens who work differently whereby you can gather whatever you want from anywhere.”
So @clive are you looking for suggestions…
Currently planted on ours are potatoes – earlies and main crop – runner beans, rhubarb (no work required except watering if very dry), squashes (a present from someone, no great expectations) and spinach about to go in.
Have to say when we first had our allotment the old Irish guy with the plot next to us was straight out of Harry Enfield central casting. But everyone else – and the inheritors of his plot – have been great.
Just to be clear, almost the entire cast on my allotment site were friendly and helpful. There were some times however when, even as a novice, I tired of “I’d have waited another two weeks to sow that”
As I mainly have my headphones on while allotmenting they have to be very determined to make themselves heard. Normally its only to get me to move my car as I’m blocking someone else in.
My experience with my dad was that many long suffering husbands used their allotments to escape from family life for several hours every week.
A comfy armchair in a decent-sized shed and very low-maintenance crops are a must for your escape-allotment.
Sheds are extremely important.
When my grandparents clocked up 70 years of marriage, my Grandfather was interviewed by the local paper.
“What’s the secret to a long and happy marriage, Walter?”
“My shed.”
Our local council has a number of allotments and I enquired about the waiting list but it seems they change hands so rarely there isn’t actually a process to do it. I think they just stay within the family/friendship group of the few people who have one.
That’s a shame they’re quite organised here in lincs but I’m very surprised I only waited a month.
Found an endless supply of manure too today … winner winner
Sorry about that, got caught short in Spalding.
Endless supply, not on ours.
More like un ours, n’est-ce pas?
Dans les bois
Just secured my own from a local livery yard
As a child I remember going for weekend family daytrips in dad’s car, in the countryside, occasionally stopping to shovel up horse droppings from the road into a cardboard box in the boot. “For the roses”.
Now if you’d said rhubarb then the old joke could have been played.
There are many good things about living in central Madrid. Having my own little plot of outdoor space isn’t one of them. I am officially jealous.
At least you’re just a bike ride away from the sea though.