Why I'm an allotmenteer

Generally I don't make these posts directly about me but on Monday something will start to happen that is, to me, beyond belief, and so I thought I'd try to put into words what my allotment means to me. And why.

I've grown on various allotments since childhood. The seasonal processes of looking after the land, feeding it, digging and weeding it and growing food on it is part of who I am. And it's not just because I love growing and eating fresh, local, organic food, although obviously that us part of it.

Working the land grounds you. It soothes the soul and allows you to slow down, to feel the seasons in all their beauty and in all their extremes. Being in the plot on a really windy day listening to the trees creaking brings the realisation of how we are, and always will be, in natures hands. Feeling the soil, working it gently and caring for it in a way that you know will bring it into maximum fertility, slows you down and forces the ears and eyes to hear and see what your hands are feeling and your brain to process that in a way that makes you think about the seasons, about past experiences. The turning of the seasons, the seasonal produce and the repetition of all these things whilst looking after and caring for that land is a powerful thing and one that as the seasons and the years pass, we realise we only know a tiny amount about. 

Sitting on the plot on a perfect summers day, listening to birdsong, watching the clouds as they pass, sowing seeds, potting plants on all with the heat of the sun on the back feels like a gentle caress. Talking to allotment neighbours, swapping plants and produce brings community to life. But even winter digging when the robin appears with every turned doc, looking for worms, makes you feel like someone or something powerful is pushing you on, willing you to succeed.

Working the land soothes the soul. We know that there is a compound in soil that raises seratonin levels, meaning that anyone suffering from low mood genuinely will be helped by working the land. Horticultural therapy works, and mixed with the sense of community on a site raises the spirits. Good food, good company and a natural antidepressant has saved people from despair.

And yet, as Monday approaches all of this is put into jeopardy. Trees that are wonderful for nesting birds and wildlife are bring felled as the horrors of a bus route that will cut 3 minutes off a journey, as long as traffic is clear, comes to life. 

The sadness I feel today is beyond explanation. 

A Bridge Too Far?

There is no doubt that the Garden Bridge is causing a lot of discussion across all the social media channels and in the press and that there are a lot of people who believe either that it is a wonderfull thing and equally many who disagree.
When I first heard about it I was thrilled too. Mooted as Londons' equivalent of New Yorks' High Line it sounded like a really innovative and exciting project that could change the way green space is used in London and be an example to other cities both in the UK and worldwide.
Cities are booming, and by 2050 it's estimated that 70% of the UK population will live in an urban area. All around the country cities are addressing how they will manage their green spaces. Visiting Sheffield recently I was lucky enough to visit 2 extraordinarily inspiring projects, The Green Estate and Heeley Park, both of which made me really think about how good design and support for areas that historically have struggled in various ways, is vital in the way we tranform inner city green spaces. These are projects that have changed lives and seen areas with historic problems change themselves through enterprise brought about through good use of the land. I myself am currently working on an inner city project in Bristols' Bearpit roundabout, which is a sunken space in the centre of the city that historically has problems with anti social behaviour, to green the space in a way that will bring an oasis of tranquility to an area that will also be a central hub with food businesses  and a vibrant market as well as lots of thought provoking urban art, bringing an unloved and fairly frightening place back into a space that encourages it to be used by all.
These examples, and there are many more, of cutting edge design mixed with the importance of social outcomes are vital if we are to see our cities prosper and the citizens living in them lead healthy lives. Green space is vital for all and it is those that are most vulnerable and for whom getting out into anything that is at all nature like, who often find accessing it the most difficult. For horticulture within cities to be taken seriously, and city councils to see the importance of this in areas of socio economic deprivation and indeed invest in it, any project taking place in the public sphere must have some need for a good social outcome, and for it to effect positive change within the community it is being placed.
At this point I also think it's worth talking a little about New Yorks' High Line, which began as a project that came about through a group of people, now The Friends of the High Line, coming together and finding the space, getting the necessary permissions and bringing the project to fruition. The friends of the High Line are still very much involved in the project and it's worth looking at their website to seee the story of the project as well as the history of the space itself. Their website can be found at www.thehighline.org.
There is no doubt that cities and the way urban greening is being addressed is changing and so I really thought the idea of a new bridge that could be accessed by all and was green in all conotations of the word was wonderful, until I started to hear concerns. The construction of the bridge will mean an area of green space along with 30 mature trees will be lost, at a time when the tree canopy of cities is being looked at and all cities are being encouraged to increase them. Mature trees support a diverse cross section of wildlife and planting new trees nearly doesn't mean that wildlife will remain in the area. The area of planting is apparently only going to be the size of half a football pitch, which makes me wonder what the rest will be used for, and it won't be open to all, 24/7, but be on a timed ticket as it is expected to be so oversubscribed. Apparently this ticket will be free but I wonder who will pay the admin cost? And it is questionable that cyclists will have access to it, or that it will even be used as a bridge in the sense that it will enable people to cross the water from one side to the other as quickly as if the river wasn't there. It will also be closed one day per month for private functions.
However my biggest problem is the fact that £60 million of public money is set to be used for this and it appears that public consultation has been at a minimum. Effectively this is a vanity project, being put into a space where already there are questions over its suitability, that is not there for the people of London or the local area, but for tourists to visit. This is nothing to do with good urban planning or biodiversity, but all about bringing in the tourist dollar. And we are spending public money to do this whilst we have people regularly accessing food banks, more children accessing free school meals than ever before and are still set to see further cuts in public funding going into the future.
With some of Londons' inner city boroughs being the most deprived areas of the UK, I question how this is acceptable. Half of the money is from Transport for London and I am quite convinced that £30million could go towards greening stations if it is money allocated to that, making them safer, kinder spaces.
So here is my main question. What are this projects social outcomes? How is it commited to the community in which it will sit? Where is the public consultation that we should all be able to access?
If in Bristol, when we embark on a new project we have to knock on neighbouring doors, ensure we have a questionnaire that is acceptable for that area and be positive that we can answer any questions with a positive spin, as well as then going through a thorough council assessment with their environmental/allotment/park and gardens departments, what has been the relevant consultation undertaken for this?
At this point I would like to say it's not too late to change all these things. The building of the bridge and the planting and landscaping could be undertaken by local people, giving them new skills, introducing them to horticulture and construction and giving them a sense of ownership. It would still be a beautifully designed space, but one that had given local people a helping hand. It can be maintained by volunteers from the local community who would talk about it with visitors as only someone can who is deeply and emotionally at one with a garden project. It could become inclusive.
I finish with a horrifying statistic. The projected cost of the bridge, in all, is approx £175million. If each of London's 32 boroughs were to share that money between them it would equate to the possibilty of there being 53 community projects in each borough, each with £100,000 to spend.
Now that would have seriously good social outcomes.....

 Both of these photos are of Sheffield's Green Estate where they have taken parkland and unloved green spaces and encouraged community enterprise through learning. This place goes beyond the extraordinary and should be held up as an example of what cutting edge urban greening and design can do to change communities.

Sustainable? But really?!

For the last year I've become increasingly cross with hearing the word sustainable used in ways that really don't make sense. So after a little bit of thought, and the knowledge that it's New Years Day and I'm always promising myself I'll blog more here, I thought I'd write a bit about what I think sustainable really means.

And maybe I need to explain what leads me to live what I hope is a fairly sustainable life and why.

In 1976, in the middle of that dreadful summer of drought, my mother said to me

"You'll be alive when the oil runs out".

I was 6. I didn't know what that meant but I knew I needed to find out, and so find out I did.

And in my mind that meant, at that age, no cars, no electricity and the need to find alternatives. I remember talking about solar power and wind and water being things that could be used to create power. And I remember thinking that resources were precious, whatever they were, and realising at that early age that Earth wasn't a finite resource if we carried on the way we were.

And then the 1980s happened. The world forgot about the problems and consumerism hit. Thát hard, cold consumerism which seemed so exciting but in actual fact set us on a completely ridiculous road.

Anyway, enough of me. Except to say that all of the above has led me to lead a life where I've constantly had that tiny phrase in the back of my head, in every thing I've ever done.

"You'll be alive when the oil runs out".

So what is sustainable?

And actually what is sustainability?

Are they the same?

For me they have to be. A sustainable life is one where you consider your every action, your every purchase. 

Food that travels half way around the world so we can have strawberries at Christmas.

Food distribution systems that mean food grown in the south of the UK, often travels to the Midlands or further, and back, before it lands in stores.

50% of fresh foods ending up in the bin before they even hit the shops.

Cheap clothing being made in sweat shops so we can have more.

Cotton being the crop that worldwide uses the most chemicals than any other.

Continual use of chemicals that have an adverse effect on our pollinators because the companies that make them claim they're safe.

Monoculture.

Soil degradation

I could go on. 

The point is that none of these things are sustainable. And yet we carry on and ignore the issues. It's just the way it is.

Or is it? Is there another way? 

Well of course there is. And it doesn't have to be about becoming a yoghurt weaver!! 

It's about personal responsibilty and not being afraid to speak up for what's fair and right. It's about having a set of ethics and sticking to them, even when people think you're a bit odd.

But mainly it's about having respect not just for the human species but for all the species on the earth and for the earth itself. It's about seeing worth in both people and things and being prepared to pay for that worth. It's about seeing things through, and not just seeing things as a project that probably won't last, but about making sure everything we do has legacy and makes a change. And, and here's the one most people squirm at, it's about making sure we all are paid our worth in whatever we do, and not being afraid to state our worth.

And there I will stop.

Happy New Year to you all. And remember, together we can all make a change.

 

Love for Love Square

Recently I visited Sheffield. I visited because Ron Finley, of Gangsta Gardening fame was visiting Sheffield to give a talk and Nigel Dunnett, of Pictorial Meadows fame, had alerted me to that and I had immediately booked a ticket, as I was also invited to an evening event around Guerrilla/community gardening later on in the week. This gave me the opportunity to spend 3 days in Sheffield finding out what was going on in the community sphere up there. What I didn't know was that Nigel had arranged for me to spend 3 days actually with Ron and the team, visiting several community based projects and meeting some people who in all honesty, have blown my socks off with their commitment not just to particular community projects but to the communities themselves.

Anyway, I digress a tad, and there will be further pieces about the community spaces I visited and how amazed I was by them. The point of this piece is to talk about the visit we took to a patch of land that will become Love Square.

In all cities there are pieces of land that are unseen. They are spaces people use everyday, whilst looking at their mobile phones, listening to music, thinking about a million other things, and they get walked through by people with their heads down, ignoring the environment and the space they are using on a daily basis. Standing on the site that Love Square will be in, an old bus and tram exchange in West Bar, we witnessed just that behaviour. As Ron did a piece to camera, people trundled through, heads down, barely even taking in that someone was filming there, let alone looking at the space they were using, and probably used once or twice every day due to its location as part of a transit route throught the city for pedestrians.

So the plan for Love Square is to create a space where people stop. A space that shows best practise of urban space that otherwise just becomes wilderness. A cafe in a shipping container, gardens, lawns and meadows and Grow Wild Modules filled with meadow planting and trees. A space for people to stop, breathe, socialise, read, be quiet or be loud. But mostly a space that people love and that shows people love back. A space that changes the community.

Working in Bristol on a very similar project, The Bearpit, a sixties sunken roundabout with anti social behaviour issues and a reputation it frankly rarely deserves, I have seen at first hand how this type of change of use can work, if at the moment on a far smaller scale. We recently, alongside the girls at the Bearpit Social cafe, whose home is a shipping container, planted up some bright containers with wild flowers as part of the Grow Wild project. The containers double as seating and within moments of the planting being finished the space was being used by people, sitting, meeting, drinking tea and just being. The Bearpit space is ongoing and will end up with forest garden, urban art and more businesses running from more shipping containers. A space that was avoided becoming a destination, a stop off point, a place that feels love and gives love to its community.

Both these projects are part of Kew and the National Lottery's Grow Wild campaign. The difference is that Love Square needs your vote as it is one of five projects that is in the final to win £120k in order to make it's vision become reality. My belief is that in order for us to make city centres feel loved and encourage these spaces to be used and therefore kept well by the groups looking after them, these projects need to be seen as models of best practice. They are bringing biodiversity into the city centres, encouraging people to engage with nature, plants and the natural environment and ensuring that place is accessible to everyone. As more and more of us live in the urban landscape, with an estimated 70% expected to live in cities by 2050, these spaces will become more and more vital, both as green lungs but also as spaces where people can volunteer and garden themselves.

Below is a link to the Love Square site and the link to the vote will be added as soon as it's live. Imagine the difference this type of planting and use of space would make to a town or city near you, and please vote for Love Square. It is, quite simply, what the future of our cities should look like.

Ron and Nigel at what will be Love Square

Imagine this land designed into a useable space.

For more info on Love Square and how it will look once the project is complete, here is the link to its webpage. Please take a look and see what an enormous difference this would make to the people of Shefield, but also to us all as we try to change our inner cities from concrete jungles to spaces that are well designed as urban landscapes. And please vote from October 7th-the decision is down to you.
Here is the link to vote

The future of our cities? Let's hope so!!

Mrs Seven Storeys Up

Recently their was a conversation on Anne Wareham's ThinkinGardens site, about community gardens and why we do or don't get involved with them etc If you'd like to read the thread it is here and it's worth a look at. In my comment I mention a lady who I call Mrs Seven Storeys Up, mainly because that was my overriding memory of my first meeting with her.
Me "hello"
Mrs SSU "No point me being here I live seven storeys up"
Me "Well I'm glad to see you. Shall we see what we might get doing today?"
Mrs SSU "We can but there's no point, I live seven storeys up"
And so the morning went on. Tea was drunk, cake was consumed, overwintered crops removed and the soil prepared and if I'm honest, I never expected to see that lady at a gardening group again.

So the following week when Mrs Seven Storeys Up arrived again I decided to see how I could engage and find out a bit more about her, other than the fact she lived seven storeys up. So we disappeared into the potting shed whilst the rest of the community group did other tasks and we talked about what she might like to grow.
"Potatoes?" I asked
"Yes please-it's a pain having to drag them to the seventh floor when you need enough for 6 people. At least the garden is closer than the supermarket"

6 people? So out the reality came. 5 kids, seven storeys up, from the age of 3 to 14. 4 boys, 1 girl. No outdoor space for any of them to run around in and no Dad to be seen for miles around. Little or no chance of moving without uprooting all the kids from schools and no money to move and do up a property anyway. Seemingly no way that life could change.

And yet every week Mrs Seven Storeys Up arrived at our little community group and got really stuck in. She bought a notebook and recorded everything we did. She asked pertinent questions about all sorrts of stuff that made me realise there was a lot of homework going on.
"I've got a teeny balcony I never use as I'm terrified the kids might fall off it but I could grow pots of blueberries-where do I get ericaceous soil from?"
"Those patio nectarines-do they really stay that small?"
"How do I get an allotment?"

The last one definitely got my attention in a way that made me start to wonder just how much this was actually life changing. So I took Mrs Seven Storeys Up through getting an allotment. And we got her one. And the community group went along and helped her clear it whilst we cleaned out her shed and collected a second hand polytunnel for her that was free on Gumtree.

And Mrs Seven Storeys Up started to grow. And not only started but just didn't stop. Constant texts asking if it was ok to sow this now, would it be wise to wait to sow that, could this go straight in the ground....... It was incredible. And not only that but her entire family started to work on the plot, from the tinies to the older kids, and her parents, all growing food and spending time together productively and more importantly happily as a cohesive unit.

Now some might say this all sounds a tad patronising and a bit oh my hasn't she done well. In reality what has actually happened is that the empowerment of growing food has changed this family's life in a way that is outstanding. When Mrs Seven Storeys Up first arrived at our community group she had been asked to come along by her GP who was treating her for depression following the horrors of post natal depression, and she was at the point of not being able to cope. For weeks the children went to grandparents at the weekend to give her a break from what must have been the monotony of every day life, coping alone in a city with 5 kids and very little support. In her mind there was no way out and this was just how it was going to be for ever.

When I wrote the piece on ThinkinGardens I rang Mrs Seven Storeys Up and said what I had written and asked if it was ok. To which the answer was "Yes, of course. It might make someone else do the same. You should write summat on that blog thing you do. You should do that more." And more general nagging.....
"So what," I asked, "has gardening done that has changed your life?"
"It's made me realise if I can grow a carrot in this bleedin' clay, I can rule the world if I want to"
"Really?" I asked, slightly tearfully
"Yes. If I can feed my kids without having to buy rubbish veg and fruit from the supermarket, and look after chickens and have a part share in a pig( of which I knew nothing until this conversation so we may have veered off point for a moment) I can do anything. Oh and by the way I've taken on the allotment next door that was empty and I'm having a jam and chutney stand next week at the school-I bet I can make some money out of this you know"
Little known to me until recently but there is also an RHS course being taken, ("can I borrow your RHS 2 notes?") and a food hygiene certificate been taken in order that chutney and jam begin to be a viable option.

So to all the doubters about community gardens and their worth, remember Mrs Seven Storeys Up. She and many like her, up and down the country, are changing their lives by growing food and empowering themselves to change their lives.  Community gardens are extraordinary places where extraordinary things happen.

Bus v BMV Soil Part 1

Last Wednesday Planning Group B voted in favour of the bus route that will see a bus only road take out 60% of my allotment site, half of Feed Bristol, Avon Wildlife Trust's award winning community food growing project and Stoke Park, the last Thomas Wright designed landscape that is still in one piece in the country.

The soils in this area are known as Bristol's Blue Finger, a finger shaped piece of Best and Most Versatile soil that stretches out of Bristol along either side of the M32, out into South Gloucestershire. These soils are special not just because they are incredibly fertile, but they also withstand the vagaries of both flood and drought, which heading into a future where we are not sure of the effects of climate change, will be vital to ensure we can produce local food for local people. Historically this land was Bristol's Market Garden, supplying fruit and vegetables to the city seasonally. 

The planning committee meeting was what can only be described as disappointing. It became obvious as the process began that no matter how many people stood up and spoke passionately about saving this land, the allotments, Feed Bristol and Stoke Park, complaining that consultation had been minimal and hadn't engaged with groups who are on the statutory list of consultees, let alone the allotment holders themselves, that this was not about communities or saving local food production, but was about money and corporate greed. It was about moving the population from their homes to a few large areas of trading and business in South Gloucestershire, and then back again at the end of the day, something that puts well used bus routes that run now, at risk. The chair of the committee at one point even laughed at how he had been on the planning committee that passed permission for the M32, which not only covered acres of BMV soils in the 1960's but also split the city in two, in a way that can never be changed. The councillors on the committee were bullied and harangued, told funding would be gone if the consent wasn't passed and to say the chair was patronising and rude would be kind.

I was appalled, and I know I was not alone. 

Of course what is needed is for BMV land to be given policies that surround it to stop this kind of development. What is vital to remember is that less than 3% of the UK's soils are BMV so a policy stopping development on it would leave 97%+ of soils left. There is a strategy document written by Defra that states that by 2030 BMV soils will be immensely challenging to develop but that is still just strategy. This needs changing at local and national levels.

But what also must be looked at is why we have to move people around the city to work in often low paid jobs, when we should be working on local jobs for local people, as well as how the decisions made by the city's councillors should show the concerns of the people of the city. There has been much discussion of the facts that this route doesn't serve any hospitals, or any of East Bristol, which is desperate for decent, affordable bus services.

So what next? There are 19+ groups, including The Blue Finger Alliance, Alliance Against Metrobus and the Civic Society, continuing the fight against this dreadful decision. There is also a letter from the National Allotment Holders Assoc stating that the land set aside the replace the allotments is of poorer quality than the plots are on now, a fact that breaks the Allotment Act of 1925 which says if allotments are to be moved it must be to equivalent or better soils. There is talk of direct action and protest. But whatever happens it is a sad day when a committee decides that whilst being European Green Capital in 2015 it is a good idea to concrete over BMV soils to serve big business.

It seems independent Bristol has a long way to go. 

the Importance of Being.......Soil

I hope this post isn't seen as a rant about allotments as, although this post is about allotment land in Bristol, it's actually about far more than that. It's about soil and food security going into an uncertain future where the vagaries of climate change and it's effects are still to be seen.

When I moved to Bristol I was regularly told that there were no allotments to be had in the city, they were all full, and until I did some digging around this seemed to be the case. It took a Twitter conversation to find out that allotments are available here as long as you're not fussy in terms of where you have one. So I took a journey out of the city centre to Stapleton, and looked around Stapleton allotments with the site rep and took on Plot79. 

Now I knew this site was under threat, and I also knew it was Grade 1 agricultural soil, and if I'm honest I probably knew that I was going to get caught up in the fight for the allotments, but first and foremost I had my plot and for me, that was the most vital point. 

Did I take much note of the Grade 1 soil status? Not really, until I began to get the most incredible yields from crops that had been really late sown and that, in all honesty, I hadn't thought I'd get much from. We had periods of real dryness and yet still the produce kept coming-lettuces and leaves, French beans, tomatoes, chillies and squash to name but a few, and buckets of flowers. 

At this point it began to dawn on me that I was pretty darn lucky to have this plot and began to get my head around not just the fact that it was under threat but also that there were groups of people, such as The Blue Finger Alliance, working really hard to save this land.

The stretch of land heading out of Central Bristol on either side of the M32 is called The Blue Finger, and it's called that because on a map of soils land of this quality is coloured blue. The finger stretches right up into South Gloucestershire and is home not just to our allotment site, but also to Feed Bristol, an outstandingly beautiful community food growing project and to Sims Hill, a community supported agriculture business, as well as various small holdings. Look on a map of Bristol from years gone by and the land the allotments and Feed Bristol is on was called The Nursery and the history of the land is that it was always Bristol's market garden, producing food for the city. This history is phenomenol, and tells tales of lives past and of families that still live in the area to this day.

And yet in our greed for time all this could be lost. The planning committee meet next Wednesday, the 27th, to determine whether a bus only junction should be allowed that will take out 60% of the allotments as well as an enormous chunk of a Feed Bristol and part of the Stoke Park Estate that is on the opposite side of the M32. Not only will Grade 1 agricultural land be lost, forever, but this land is all Green Belt, which national policy dictates should only be built on if there is no option to build elsewhere, which there most definitely is, and much of the land has specifically been managed for wildlife and nature. The stunning wildflower meadow at Feed Bristol will be turned into a road with an enormous bus stop in it, and effectively what allotments are left will be part of a roundabout for a bus.

But, I hear you cry, they have to offer alternative plots, and this they are doing. However, the Allotment Act states that any allotment that is bring moved must be put onto land that is as good or better than the land previously used by the allotment holder, this is, of course, impossible when the land being moved from is Grade 1.

At this point I have to say far be it for me to argue that Bristol doesn't need a better public transport system. As a bus user and non driver I agree it needs to be high on the agenda. But, and here's the crux, Grade 1 soils make up less than 3% of the country's soil and has proven it's resilience over and again against drought and flood, holding onto it's structure and nutrient content when lesser soils would have failed. Since the a Industrial Revolution we have consistently used the same 38% of land in the UK to grow food and much of that land has reached and gone over it's peak health and is now struggling. We have expected these soils to produce higher and higher yields through the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, and now many of them are starting to struggle, particularly where they have had to manage flood or drought. Surely we need to create policy to secure this Grade 1 land across the UK, and safe guard it for the futures of generations to come?

Imagine returning to a reality of local producers using this land and land like it in pockets across the country, to feed local food to local people. Is this a pipe dream? I think not, and more and more I am speaking to people who believe this could be the vision for food security in the UK. Let's put food growing at the same level and importance as transport and create holistic policies that look at transport, food production, health, education and wealth on the same level. And let's make specific soil policy so that these soils are protected going into the future.

Below is the link to a petition asking the Mayor of Bristol to help stop this. At this juncture I feel compelled to say that the Mayor cannot just stop this as there are contracts in place that would mean Bristol would have to pay huge penalties if it pulled out, but none the less it is to the Mayor's councillors we are looking to say no at planning committee. Please sign this petition and then please look at the following link, produced by The Blue Finger Alliance, which is the alternative vision of The Blue Finger, and what we would all like to see happen.

There are also some photos of the land below.

http://chn.ge/1rZRjFH

http://www.bluefingeralliance.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/The-Blue-Finger-Vision.-A-world-class-hub-of-urban-agriculture-for-the-Bristol-city-region.pdf