I was pleasantly surprised when I got an email from the Acton Gardening Association last October telling me that a plot had become available at the Bromyard allotments. I had put my name down so long ago, I’d completely forgotten. I asked if I could come and see the plot before making up my mind, and got a bit of a shock. It was strewn with weeds and discarded plastic and had what looked like a fly tip at one end. There were no crops apart from some potatoes and spring onions. I could see at a glance it would be a lot of work to get it into a fit state to plant some summer vegetables, not to mention looking after them once they were in the ground. ‘I’ll take it,’ I said.
I didn’t visit again until this April, by which time it resembled a little patch of wilderness. Meanwhile, the adjoining plot looked like a movie set from a Disney adaptation of a Beatrix Potter story. Everything was perfectly manicured and just so. Indeed, my allotment was by some distance the most overgrown in the entire area. I’d better get to work.
The overall atmosphere at the allotments is like that of a small village where no one bothers to lock their doors
It took me four weekends to clear the weeds, pick out the bits of plastic and remove the fly tip. I left the potatoes and spring onions and divided the remaining space between tomatoes, courgettes and runner beans, all of which I bought in the allotment shop. It was with no little sense of satisfaction that I stood back and admired my handiwork. I still couldn’t hold a candle to my neighbour – who turned out to be a literal set designer called Laura – but at least my plot no longer looked like a motorway verge in Essex.
When I next dropped in, I was shocked to discover that most of the vegetables had been eaten by slugs and snails. The courgettes and runner beans had vanished and all that remained of my tomato plants were a few sad-looking leaves. I glanced over at Laura’s plot and realised that the pretty little green nets she’d erected around her seedlings weren’t just for decoration.
I consulted the Association secretary and she gave me some netting abandoned the previous year. It had patches of white paint on it and needed disentangling, but beggars can’t be choosers. I then bought some bamboo, borrowed a saw from another plot-holder, ordered some cable ties and a Stanley knife from Amazon, returned to the shop to buy some more vegetables – ‘Back so soon?’ – and set about building a net fortress. Once it was complete, I dug a little moat around the perimeter and filled it with slug pellets. The whole thing looked like a miniature chemical warfare plant, but at least I’d given my vegetables a fighting chance.
It worked, sort of. After an unusually wet May, and unmolested by garden pests, my plants began to grow. But so too did everything else and by the time June arrived the plot was carpeted with weeds. I hadn’t thought to leave a doorway in Fort Knox, so there was no way to get in without dismantling the entire edifice. I decided to leave everything as it was, even though some of the weeds dwarfed the tomato plants, and pass the problem on to my son Charlie, whom I tasked with looking after the allotment during my four-week speaking tour of New Zealand and Australia, where I am now.
Charlie has visited twice and, on my instructions, removed all the nets and done some weeding, refilling the moat with slug pellets. At least, he says he has and was quick to invoice me for the work. But I asked him to send some photographs and none has been forthcoming. I imagine him sitting there in a garden chair, scrolling through football videos on YouTube, as gulls and crows descend from above and a column of snails march through a hole in the netting. I’m tempted to employ a professional gardener, but that rather defeats the point of having an allotment. It’s supposed to be therapeutic. My only other hobby is supporting QPR and that’s hardly stress-free.
I’ve enjoyed it so far. What’s lovely about it is seeing the dedication of my fellow smallholders, some of whom have, like Laura, made extraordinarily neat and well-ordered plots. They’re mainly retirees and it’s as if they’ve recreated the bucolic England of their childhood as the world around them has descended into chaos. The atmosphere is like that of a small village where no one bothers to lock their doors and everyone shares responsibility for the upkeep of the village green. As Britain is about to be plunged into a one-party dictatorship, I look around at this quintessentially English oasis and tell myself there’s hope for the old country yet.
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