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Issue Number 10 |
Autumn 2001 |
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QED ALLOTMENTS: FIFTH ANNUAL REPORT Active participants in the QED Allotments Group over the past year have included the allotment associations at Bean, Dartford Road, Gore Road, Marcet Road, Tredegar and Wilmot Road Allotments and the West Dartford Allotment and Garden Society, plus individual allotment gardeners from other sites within the Borough. Achievements since the previous Annual Report (published in Newsletter Issue 8) include the following: € Participants in the 2001 Dartford Festival Allotments Competition, organised by the QED Allotments Group, received complementary tickets to the Bexley Gardens Festival. The prize-giving ceremony for the 2000 Competition was held at the Civic Centre in November. Watch out for the entry form for the 2002 Competition in the next issue of this Newsletter. Several of the Group's member associations participated in the 2001 Dartford Festival in Central Park in July, which included a "model allotment" (complete with shed) created by Malcolm Still and other members of the Tredegar Allotments Club. € In partnership with the QED Waste Management and Pollution Group, supplies of commercially unrecyclable pallets (for compost bins, sheds and raised beds), old carpets (for weed suppression and land reclamation) and wood chippings (for paths) have been secured from local businesses and contractors and made available to plotholders throughout the Borough. A full colour pamphlet on composting originally produced by the London Borough of Bexley has been adapted for use in Dartford and distributed through local allotment associations. € Continuing support has been provided to Tredegar Allotments to further their regeneration. Hard standing has been completed for the mobile building, and a grant from the QED Steering Group has enabled the construction of a wildlife pond as a joint project with the QED Biodiversity Group, with assistance from the North West Kent Countryside Project. A grant of £2,500 has been awarded by the CWS Community Dividend Fund in support of regeneration of the site. € In partnership with the QED Biodiversity Group, further steps have been taken to promote organic gardening in the Borough and to celebrate Dartford's historic connections to the organic horticulture movement. A commemorative plaque for Lawrence Hills, founder of the Henry Doubleday Research Association, who once lived in Tower Road and obtained his first employment as a trainee in Central Park, Dartford has been prepared and received its first public airing at the Harvest Festival service held at Holy Trinity Church in October 2001, where other materials on healthy growing and eating were also on display. A permanent home for the plaque will be found in the coming year. A Biodiversity Action Plan for Allotments in Dartford, modelled on that prepared by the Local Agenda 21 Allotments Group in the London Borough of Ealing, has been developed and approved. For the second year running a coach trip was organised to HDRA's "Potato Day" event at Ryton Organic Gardens near Coventry. € Talks have been given by members of the QED Allotments Group to a Community Gardening Conference held at the University of Nottingham, an International Sustainable Development Research Conference at Manchester University, an Urban Agriculture Conference at the University of North London, the East London Food Futures Project in Newham, Derbyshire Rural Community Council, an allotments seminar in Burnley, the Seminar of the Office International du Coin de Terre et des Jardins Familiaux in Munich (with support from the International Office and the National Society of Allotment and Leisure Gardeners), and the Rural Development Planning Commission in Tokyo (with support from the Sumitomo Foundation). The research officer acted as the lead speaker in a Questline telephone conference on allotment promotion sponsored by Shell Better Britain Campaign.
QED ALLOTMENTS: FIFTH ANNUAL REPORT (cont.) € Financial support from QED has enabled members of the group to attended conferences and seminars on Local Food and Sustainable Development at the Woodbrooke Centre, Birmingham, the Nottingham Community Gardens Conference, the official launch of the good practice guide Growing in the Community, and a "Seed Search" conference hosted by HDRA at Ryton. € During the year QED hosted visits by two Japanese gardening experts: Professor Ren Azuma of Mie University, and Ms Eri Nakajima of the Ministry of the Environment, Government of Japan. € Since the publication of the Fourth Annual Report further articles and news items have appeared on the QED Allotments Group's activities in the Daily Telegraph, Mirror, Ecologist, News Shopper, Local Government First, and on the BBC Radio 4 programme Home Planet. The Group is also featured in the Local Government Association's Advocacy Document for Allotments and in the good practice guide Growing in the Community . The full text of a lecture on the QED Allotments Group and sustainable development in the UK has been published in Japanese by the Rural Development Planning Commission in Tokyo. € QED Allotments' research officer has co-authored Growing in the Community - A Good Practice Guide for the Management of Allotments with Professor David Crouch and Dr Joe Sempik, which was published in June by the Local Government Association, and a follow-up pamphlet designed specifically for planners co-authored with David Crouch under the title Sustaining the Plot: Communities, Gardens and Land Use was published by the Town and Country Planning Association in September 2001. Items on Growing in the Community have appeared in the Allotment and Leisure Gardener, Amateur Gardening, eg Magazine, Garden News, Gardening Which?, the Guardian, Interactive, the Kitchen Garden and Town and Country Planning, and on BBC TV's Newsroom Southeast. € Advice on the role of allotments in sustainable development strategies and related issues has been given to local authorities including Pendle, Plymouth, Watford and Wiltshire, to Bury Council for Voluntary Services to Staffordshire Community Council, to allotment groups and associations in Bexley, Blyth Valley, Cardiff, Crayford, Devizes, Ealing, Gosport, Greater Manchester, Hereford, Newham, Okehampton, Reading, Runnymede, Sevenoaks, Southwark and Sunderland, to Greenfingers.com, Groundwork Thames Valley, the Local Government Association, Sainsburys, researchers at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell and students writing dissertations on allotment issues at Birkbeck College (University of London), the Open University, Nottingham Trent University and the University of York, and to the Independent on Sunday, Gardening Which? and Positive News. € The QED Allotments Group has submitted comments on the public consultation draft of a revised Planning Policy Guidance (PPG) Note 17: Sport, Open Space and Recreation. € The QED Allotments Group has been an active supporter of the Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens. The Group's Research Officer is an elected member of the FCF&CG's Council of Management, and has attended meetings in this capacity in Bristol, London, Newcastle, Scarborough and Unstone Grange (Sheffield) and represented the Federation at the launch of the People, Land and Sustainability report in Nottingham and the National Lottery's SEED programme in Sutton. In June the QED Allotments Group group hosted a familiarisation visit by Diana Battaglia, the Federation's new Eastern Regional Worker, and in July, Robert Johnson, Eileen Poulton and Richard Wiltshire attended the Federation's Annual General Meeting held at the GreenHouse in Bristol, and took the opportunity to visit gardening and community orchard projects at Windmill Hill and St Werburg's City Farms and Horfield Allotments.
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