Page 17 - ALG Issue 1 2019

Letters
Dear Secretary,
I am writing to you in support of allotments.
Allotments should be prescribed on the NHS! At 95 I can
say that allotments have kept me fit and well apart from a few minor ailments for these past 70 years. I have worked an allotment (sometimes several simultaneously) from after being demobbed in April 1947 until April 2017, without a break. I have had a variety of sites in different parts of the Country, and with different soils - Weavers Road (Wellingborough), 3 different sites in the County town of Bedford, Barrowell Green allotments in Palmers Green (London), and finally at the Pin Mill, Chelmondiston in Suffolk.
What would be my advice to anyone starting up?
• Keep the plot in good heart - in particular don’t let the weeds takeover, and definitely don’t let them seed. Follow the old adage ‘weed before you think you need to’. Also use appropriate soil improver when you feel it’s required.
• Be selective in what you grow - learn from what the plot tells you it can grow well. Not everything will grow well in the same area, so don’t waste effort by continually trying to grow things that results from the plot tell you are not possible.
• Be realistic in your expectations - don’t take on more ground than you can cope with. I have frequently seen newcomers to allotmenteering disheartened in the first year or so by the unexpected and unremitting hard work required to keep a plot in good shape, and then give up. So, start small and grow your ground with your experience.
At 95 years old and after 70 years of attrition, arthritis has overtaken me so that I am no longer able to do heavy work, but I enjoyed every minute of that 70 years. I am still gardening as best I can, however, and looking after
a greenhouse stocked with all sorts of plants - cacti, succulents, exciting new cuttings etc.
Happy gardening everyone!
Eric Deacon
Dear Sir or Madam,
It was so refreshing to read on page 32 of the Magazine Issue 4 2018, about Paul Woolley’s experience after his accident, along with how he adapted in order to carry on with his interest in gardening. For myself I have had a similar experience, as in August 1993, I was taken ill with severe food poisoning, followed by a complaint called Guillain Barre Syndrome, which destroys the coating on the system of one’s nerves, and has left me with severe Axon Nerve damage.
I was told that I most probably would never be able to stand and walk normally again; to walk normally no, but I can manage with walking aids, to my delight.
But gardening-wise, like Paul, one has to adapt. I have wide
paths both sides of my two ten poles of my allotments, that enables me to work from my electric-powered scooter, as I can reach well past the centre of each plot with a long handled hoe. I have made
an assortment of stools to sit on when working the plots, such as sowing potatoes and seeds etc. One stool I fitted a set of tracks to, so that I do not have to struggle to get up and down from a sitting position, as at times I find it quite a struggle to do so. Due to the loss of normal use in my hands, I have constructed different types of tools that enable me to carry on working my plots, as gardening tools for the use for people with certain disabilities are few and far between, as the saying goes.
It is also very rare to see or read such information about people with certain disabilities gardening, be it in magazines or on certain television programmes. One occasionally sees a person with disabilities talking while sitting in a chair or on a scooter, but not actually showing others how they manage to cope, that is why I found it refreshing to see Paul Woolley’s article in the magazine. Stanley Joseph Clark
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