Suburban Warfare

The upsurge in interest in growing your own produce is an inevitable consequence of increasing mis-trust and suspicion about where our food comes from.

What better way to be absolutely sure about the source of our basic foodstuffs than to plant, nurture and harvest them ourselves.

It is not a case of extreme measures as depicted in the comfortable middle class ways of The Good Life. Indeed in all of my years I do not recall ever having seen anyone turning their residential gardens over to intensive horticulture.

It was quite different back in the inter-war and early post war periods when householders were expected to keep a few chickens, ducks, geese and the odd pig at the bottom of the garden amongst a well tended and seasonally productive vegetable plot.

Newer housing developments with their postage stamp sized gardens, whilst not conducive to agriculture ,actually prohibited the keeping of livestock with restrictive covenants in the title deeds. The ethics behind growing your own did not sit easily with the chattering classes of the suburban estates. Such covenants were probably prudent and in the public interest to prevent neighbourly conflict, petty pilfering and a proliferation of vermin who are inevitably attracted to such land use.

In response to concerns over the provenance of our food there has been a increase in the allocation of land for allotments and I know of very large and very recently established areas on the edge of two large towns in my home area. These have been well received and have rapidly reached full occupancy and with a fiercely contested waiting list, to rival the best educational institutions.

The new allotments are well managed with a standardised size and style of permitted shed on each plot and good levels of security within a stout and tall perimeter fence. There are controls prohibiting fires, hours of attendance and control of substances, biological or not.

In the past, the allotment served as a recreational outlet and a refuge for the men folk. The images of old gents sat snoozing or chatting collectively or perhaps smoking a pipe or Capstan non-filters are familiar and comforting. It was only the arrival of the youngest member of the family to fetch their dad or grandfather for his tea back home that caused the disbandment of many a session down at the plot.

The new style allotment has become the pursuit of the upwardly mobile families with everyone mucking in to take on the mundane tasks of clearance, preparation of the soil for planting and overseeing the process through to food on the table. There are the stalwarts of home-grown produce in durable spuds, carrots, turnips and onions, the spring vegetables  for salads and a few ambitious attempts, micro-climate permitting to cultivate grape vines, quinoa, passion and citrus fruits.

The original social movement behind allotments was to provide fresh air, exercise and a means of supplementing the diet of the working classes. Land was usually leased by a Local Association from the Town Council, placed in perpetuity for such use by a generous philanthropist or just permitted on land holdings of the railway companies or industrial sites. It was a cultural thing. There were intense rivalries for best marrows, root veg or soft fruits and the Association Annual Show would be a highlight of the social calendar for many.

The hard working ethic required for the manual labour of the day job continued in the tending of the allotment. The decline of traditional industries and working practices impacted on the numbers of those willing and able to commit to home grown duties.

Pressure to provide places for a rapidly increasing population to live also saw many parcels of former growing land disappear under roads and housing estates. What may have once been an allotment on the very edge of town found itself surrounded, overrun and surrendering to urban expansion.

Cheap and plentiful food on the supermarket and hypermarket shelves was a deterrent to growing your own. It was conceivable that a small crop of home grown carrots, based on hours tended and effort expended could be very expensive indeed.

Food scares and scandals in recent years have shaken the confidence of the public in the food supply industries and this has been the catalyst for the renewed interest in small scale cultivation.

A militancy has also developed in the larger cities and towns by individuals or groups to take over vacant or derelict land for production on a co-operative and social venture basis. In almost guerrilla actions there have been raids and seed scatterings on dormant development land, potato planting on council owned holdings, ploughing and planting on traffic islands , verges and motorway embankments.

The mass action in some urban areas has been accepted by the authorities and what were in the first instance aggressive land grabs have been put on a formal basis with short term leases and agreements. Growing Clubs have taken root with members paying a subscription fee in addition to participating in organised and structured working parties which entitles them to a proportionate share of the harvest.

A few random plantings have taken place with anyone encouraged to help themselves. The natural path of progress from the early green shoots of a public awareness of what can be grown. There is a renewed momentum for city farms and larger enterprises including spin-offs for education in diets, variations in menus and to nurture the resurgence in all things cooking. It is a return to the good life.