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BRASSICAS AND BEYOND
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SPADEWORKS REVIVED - the regeneration
of an allotment site
Reg Hembrow, our senior member, was 40 when he
asked the Council to provide an allotment site in
the long meadow between the back of his row of
houses and the branch railway line at the top of
the rise. The site was duly created and Reg, on the
evening we presented him with his certificate for
50 years as an allotment holder, showed our members
the yellowing and fragile receipt for 6 shillings
and 8 pence his first year cost him. That's about
34p in current money.
Reg, aged 87, is pictured here with our local
MP, the year after we started our regeneration of
the site. Reg is now rising 93, and in fine weather
still works the 2 plots covered with the shrubs and
roses he has lovingly budded and grafted over the
years. True, some of the fine specimens have
matured with Reg and are now quite large, but he is
a legend in his own lifetime and has seen the site
go from fruitfulness to scrubland and back again to
virtually full occupancy during his tenancy. He has
seen them come and go, and come again. Through it
all his love of growing things has endured. He
exemplifies the lasting connection between the
gardener and the earth he tills.
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This is the updated account of how we regenerated our 30
plot site from the wilderness shown by the next four
pictures ...
... to fertile cultivated plots like these...
It was hard work, and these are some of the people, our
members past and present, who did it, on communal working
days ...
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We cleared rubbish, moved and repaired sheds
rescued from the brambles, covered plots, and laid
paths.
To clear the wilderness we needed machinery and
money. Over the years we have raised something like
£15000 in grant funding ourselves from various
sources for our projects. Our benefactors are
listed at the end of this account, and we are very
thankful for their generosity. And we are eternally
grateful to the Shell Better Britain Campaign who
started us off with an initial grant of £2000,
which gave us the confidence and impetus to achieve
everything else.
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In came the JCB ...
... which grubbed out a mountain of scrub and brambles
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... and was followed by the plough, which gave us this
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... and rotovator, which gave us ...
... this ...
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... instead of this!
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We now had 10 extra cleared plots to fill, and after many
false starts and with considerable turnover of aspiring
allotmenteers, we did. Along the way we obtained more
funding and had a barbecque and barn building day ...
... which together with yet more funding produced our
shredding barn and composting bays ...
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We now run a neighbourhood composting scheme.
Green and woody waste from plot holders and our
immediate neighbours is stored in the shredding
barn, and 3 or 4 times a years we pay for chipping
sessions.It takes a maximum of 2 hours for our
accumulated woody waste to be reduced to a
surprisingly small volume in the big bins, and it
produces good compost to condition our heavy clay
soil.
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Next to the shredding barn is our wild life area and pond
(more funding). The picture (Below Left) shows the seating
area near the top of the wild life garden. On the extreme
left the guttering from the roof of the barn feeds a barrel
which in turn feeds a 1000 gallon underground tank under the
decking and the seat. The stored rainwater replenishes our
pond, at the bottom of the picture hidden by the plants
surrounding it. The curiously coloured newt (Below Right)
giving the camera a suspicious look, is one of the grateful
amphibians which have colonised it.
At this stage Bristol City Council's allotment strategy
came up trumps, the sale of redundant allotment land
providing significant capital to renew not just our
infrastructure but that of many other sites.
In came the heavy squad again ...
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... just fitting between the fence and
the sheds ...
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...to change our rutted hauling way from
this ...
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... to this!
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...and this!
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Like many sites we have had our share of
vandalism ...
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... but the infrastructure improvements
ran to new fencing ...
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... and once the gaps were plugged, we have not had a
significant problem since. Palisade fencing is pretty
effective.
The site is unrecognisable from what it was in its
decline, and there has been time to diversify ...
... from standard vegetable growing
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... into willow which is woven into
plant supports ...
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... to compete in the allotment section
of the Bristol Flower Show ...
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... to maintain our wildlife area and
pond ...
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... and even to keep chickens!
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A trial of bee-keeping was abandoned after
several people were stung - probably because it was
difficult to site the hives appropriately on our
narrow and sloping site. But the bees are producing
lots of honey on a farm not too far away.
It's been hard work for everyone, and there have
been numerous failures along the way - but we
haven't photographed those. Our members have been
marvellous, and our latest social occasion, a
Bonfire night barbecque under cover of which we
managed to burn 2 years accumulation of waste wood,
was well attended.
Best of all we have a new Chairman and Secretary
and the prospect of successive involvement of our
members in running the site. Not that we intend to
stagnate; other sites have piloted brilliant ideas
for using allotments in all sorts of original ways.
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Our advice to others now is "Don't be too proud to
copy"! And of course, never give up. Good luck to everyone
attempting to regenerate their site; you can do it.
Supported by Shell Better Britain Campaign,
Bristol Environmental Body, Grants to go wild (Agenda 21),
Bristol Water, Greater Bristol Foundation, Churngold
Environmental Fund, Bristol City Council, Sustainable
Neighbourhood Fund, and BTCV
[This version posted 4 January 2004]
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