Gardening
Allotments
Plotting a better future
Cleve West explains why green is the new black as city slickers jostle for allotment spaces alongside health-conscious mums and foodies
A friend called recently to express his dismay at the long waiting lists for allotments in his area. With 69 people in front of him he's wondering whether he'll have the energy to sign for the tenancy let alone lift a fork and dig when he eventually gets his chance.
Allotments are more popular now than at any time since the Second World War. Fortunately we acquired ours seven years ago when they weren't quite so fashionable and, with only a small garden at home, this is where most of our real gardening takes place. It can be frustrating but only because we can never spend enough time there and be on top of things as and when they need doing. When we do find the time, the satisfaction gained from the simple pleasure of growing and eating fresh organic food is hugely rewarding.
Creating a show garden for Saga Insurance at the Chelsea Flower Show last year kept me away from both the allotment and the design studio for a whole month and, while it is relatively easy to postpone design work for a few weeks, leaving the allotment unattended during May, can seriously affect your chances of a decent harvest later in the year. It's a crucial month, not necessarily for getting crops in open ground (June is often a safer bet when all risk of frost has passed) but tending seedlings, successional sowing and keeping abreast of the first wave of slugs happy among a glut of entrees is time consuming on an organic plot.
My partner Christine, an artist, was also involved helping at Chelsea so we decided early on to get help in tending the plot during out four week absence. No one raised an eyebrow over such an arrangement and this says much about how allotments have changed since the Dig for Victory campaigns of the two World Wars. The thought of paying someone to look after your plot would have seemed beyond the pale six years ago when I rescued my first plot from couch grass, bindweed and brambles with attitude.
You only need to see the cars at allotments these days to see that things have changed. No longer are they the sole ownership of the solitary working-class man who, aside from getting away from ''er indoors', actually did subsidise the family's food bill. Today allotments are just as fashionable among middle-classes and women. This may seem a shame, an abhorrence even, to those who have known allotments since those dark days but, in many respects, it has levelled the playing field and booted any notion of horticultural snobbery firmly into touch.
In the grip of the city they have become increasingly important as sanctuary. You only need to add up the time and the money spent on producing the crops at an allotment to see that it makes far better economic sense to buy from the supermarket. But people quite clearly derive huge amounts of pleasure growing their own food no matter how much it costs them.
Many people will tell you about the importance of knowing what goes into your food, being absolutely certain that no chemicals have been used, and the freshness, which is an important factor when it comes to taste. However, actually being part of the process, taking exercise, enjoying fresh air, wildlife and experiencing a wide range of people of various socio-economic and cultural backgrounds is very appealing and, in its own way, nourishing in terms of well-being.
Allotments have obviously become more about lifestyle than survival, so it's hardly surprising that cooking has become as popular as weeding. At our plot you can tell the direction of the prevailing wind by the nationality of the food being wafted your way. Boston beans and smoked garlic from our American neighbours in the east, stir fries from a Vietnamese family in the south and ephemeral pools and eddies of Neplali curry hanging tantalisingly on a mouth watering south westerly.
Taking our first vegetables home was something of a landmark, but tasting them on site was even better. It's difficult to be objective about taste when you've spent so long preparing, nurturing and protecting but freshness is, without a doubt, a major contributor especially when you can get your spuds into a pot of boiling water less than 30 seconds from being dug from the soil.
Allotments are where the hunter-gatherer instinct is sharpened. A gas stove or barbeque may be the city-dwellers' easy answer to rubbing sticks but is no less potent nonetheless. Hooked by the novelty of cooking 'on-site' anything from vegetable soup to a simple plate of broad beans tops (pinched out to control blackfly) with a knob of butter will suffice for lunch and occasionally spontaneous suppers last well into the evening with improvisation never far away.
Once, taking advantage of an open fire, a Nepali friend came to the rescue after our tomatoes showed the first sign of blight. Throwing all the green tomatoes on a grill he roasted them black then mashed in coriander, chilies, lemon and punch puran (five seeds) to make a delicious chutney.
In return I was able to share an old onion bahjee recipe from my grandmother, a part-time actress, who played Ava Gardner's mother in the film Bhowani Junction (1956). The bahjees, (we called piajoos), achieved notoriety being fed to Ms Gardner on the film set, and we often deep-fry them at the plot in a karahi over an open fire whenever there's cause for celebration.
Sharing of recipes, not to mention seeds and produce is a wonderful device for social interaction and breaking-down down barriers between communities with a common interest. So, among the odd four wheel drive there are still jalopies, motorbikes, bicycles and pedestrians and there are also prams and scooters proving a healthy family involvement.
Quite simply, allotments have become a marvellous example of how communities can work as a virtual Utopian existence where barriers of age, race and religion give way to a common appreciation of healthy living, wildlife, and a modicum of eccentricity. That doesn't mean to say there aren't disputes and personality clashes, nothing's ever that perfect.
I dare say too that many of us still have aspirations for our own walled garden (I know I do) in the country where you can light bonfires without upsetting anyone, keep chickens and have room to plant the sort of numbers of plants us designers keep harping on about.
But, on closing a large groaning gate of the allotment behind us, the world we enter is as powerful as any private garden, no matter how grand, and proof that the role of gardens - at a time when the predicament of the planet hangs precariously in the balance - has never been more important.
Read Cleve West's onion bhajee recipe - as fed to Ava Gardner by his grandmother on the set of Bhowani Junction
