The Allotment Movement in Britain

Passage

A An allotment, in British usage, is a small plot of publicly owned land rented out cheaply to a private individual for growing vegetables, fruit and flowers. The practice is not a modern rediscovery of self-sufficiency; it has been part of urban life in Britain for more than a century, and in some towns for considerably longer, with roots that trace back to a period when growing your own food was less a hobby than a necessity. B The system as it exists today largely dates from the Industrial Revolution, when large numbers of rural workers moved into rapidly growing towns and lost the gardens, and often the diet, that had come with living in the countryside. Local charities and some employers began renting out small plots to working families as a way of supplementing wages that food alone could not stretch to cover. The practice was formalised by the Allotments Act of 1908, which placed a legal duty on local councils in England and Wales to provide allotment plots wherever there was a demonstrated demand for them — a duty that, on paper, still exists today. C Demand, and the land made available to meet it, has never been constant. Cultivation expanded sharply during both world wars, when the government's "Dig for Victory" campaign turned growing vegetables into a patriotic act rather than a private hobby, and parks, sports grounds and even the moat of the Tower of London were dug over for the purpose. By 1943 an estimated 1.4 million allotment plots were in cultivation nationwide, a figure that has never been approached since. D The decades after 1945 saw a long, steady decline. Rising wages, the spread of supermarkets and the arrival of cheap imported produce made growing your own vegetables look like hard work for a small saving rather than a necessity, and allotments acquired a slightly old-fashioned image, associated in the popular imagination with retired men rather than the general population. Councils, under pressure to build housing, sold off allotment land they judged to be under-used, and waiting lists in many areas emptied out almost entirely. E That decline has reversed sharply over the past two decades. Interest in where food comes from, concern about pesticides and food miles, and a simple desire among city dwellers for a patch of outdoor space they can call their own have all been credited with the shift, though no single explanation fully accounts for it. Whatever the mix of causes, the effect is measurable: waiting lists in several British cities now run to several years, and some councils have stopped adding new applicants to the list altogether because the wait has become so unrealistic. F The revival has brought its own problems. Councils charge rent for a plot, but the rent rarely covers the true cost of maintaining the site — water supply, paths, boundary fences — so many sites are run down even as demand for them rises. Most allotment agreements require a plot to be kept reasonably cultivated, and a tenant who lets a plot run to weeds for a season risks losing it, a rule that exists to stop people holding a plot speculatively while doing nothing with it, but which can feel harsh to a tenant going through a difficult year. G Beyond the vegetables themselves, researchers who study allotments point to benefits that have little to do with food. Regular light exercise, time spent outdoors, and the informal community that forms between neighbouring plot-holders have all been linked to measurable improvements in mental wellbeing among regular allotment gardeners, and several studies have found the social contact matters as much to long-term satisfaction as the harvest does. Many sites now run children's growing schemes with local schools, on the reasoning that a child who has grown a vegetable is considerably more likely to eat it. H Whether the current level of demand can be met long-term is an open question. Land in and around British cities is under sustained pressure from housing development, and an allotment site, however long-established, is rarely as protected in planning terms as its supporters would like. For now, the waiting lists suggest the demand is real and growing; whether the land to satisfy it will still be there in another generation is considerably less certain.

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