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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] UK: Allotment wars flare up as gardening gets competitive
  • Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2009 08:29:53 -0700


http://property.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/property/gardens/articl

e5968124.ece


Allotment wars flare up as gardening gets competitive
Landscape gardeners, shed envy and vandalised plants — allotment owners
are playing dirty

A recent visit to the allotment of my childhood revealed that a new owner
had paid top whack for a landscape gardener to come and “do” their
plot, complete with raised beds, gravel paths and a matching potting
shed/greenhouse painted in Farrow & Ball colours, to keep things
aesthetically just so. There was no sign of the Arthur Beale-type hardy
perennials, who tended their plots come rain, frost and fog, and didn’t
care a hoot if their rake didn’t match their shovel. Now it’s all
competitive social one-upmanship, brand new Hunter clogs and swarms of
Nyudies — new yuppie diggers.

It all started a couple of years ago, at the peak of the organic craze.
Inspired by Jamie Oliver, mummies across the land started doing whatever
they could to ensure that their darling alpha kids benefited from seasonal,
home-grown produce. If Ocado didn’t deliver it, and the farmers’ market
didn’t stock it, then allotment owners could jolly well grow it. The
trouble is, horror of horrors, the waiting lists for allotments are double
that of an Hermès Birkin bag. In some areas — Kensal Rise, for example
— it’s as long as 10 years. So imagine the smug joy of those who do
have one. A plot of one’s own, complete with rickety old shed — and,
for the lucky ones, such as the couture milliner Flora McLean, a pot-belly
stove, a tree house and a swing — used to be the preserve of
non-competitive, weathered salt-of-the-earthies.

Now Nyudies are more likely to be found wrestling furiously with a ball of
RK Alliston twine and obsessive-compulsively styling their mini greenhouses
to ensure they reference the latest Burberry campaign. (It was photographed
by Mario Testino at that ultimate destination for all Nyudies, Petersham
Nurseries — could growing your own get any chicer?) No wonder the
wonderful world of allotments has been infiltrated by show-offs — and
keeping up with them requires shock tactics.

Lucy, a stylist friend based in southwest London, visited her mum’s plot
to help with the weeding and discovered the neighbouring “too posh”
pergola had mysteriously burnt down. Rumours among the flower pots suggest
the treachery was not the work of vandals but of neighbouring allotment
owners fed up with the Sunday afternoon rave music and whiff of skunk
permeating from the pergola’s direction. Another Nyudie was spotted by a
veteran digger “planting” fully grown pumpkins, art director-style,
among the veggies, for her alpha kids to “pick”. And one novice
committed the ultimate sin and unleashed herself on the wrong person’s
plot. So excited was she upon being finally granted a space in the much
adored and coveted Fulham Palace allotments that she dug up the wrong one
by mistake, destroying years of careful planting.


For allotment advocates, all this digging for victory, whether by oneself
or one’s staff, can only be a good thing. “Allotments are terribly chic
now,” says Merilyn Canet, southeast rep of the National Society of
Allotments and Leisure Gardeners, whose job title has become a point of
bragging for her daughter, a restaurant PR. “What I do is certainly
considered rather trendy. People are discussing their allotments at dinner
parties.” Canet says that the popularity of the humble plot has soared in
the past two years. “Their desirability has increased enormously. It’s
changed from being a small section of the community to people who have
large houses, large incomes and no gardens.”

For the likes of Canet, the plot motto is, use it or lose it. “I say any
type of allotment user is welcome through the gates. There are no rules
that say you can’t bring in staff to dig your trenches for you if
that’s what you want.”

Not all the old guard agree. “People have changed in the allotments,”
says McLean, who has had her allotment for eight years. “They’re not as
friendly, which is a great shame. I used to get through the gate and feel
as if I was in another world, in a time gone by with people asking how you
were, tipping you a wink and giving you handy hints, saying, ‘What you
want to do with those beans is …’ Now its more about shed envy, or
buying it from the plant centre and getting your best man on the job.”
Sadly for her, with waiting lists and tactics growing ever scarier, the
“my marrow’s bigger than yours” brigade appear to be gaining the
upper hand.

nsalg.org.uk

Jenny Dyson is the editor of Rubbish magazine (dailyrubbish.co.uk). She is
on a seven-year waiting list for her allotment






  • [Livingontheland] UK: Allotment wars flare up as gardening gets competitive, Tradingpost, 03/30/2009

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