Page 38 - ALG Issue 1 2019

General
Subscribe to the...
...get your own copy direct to your door!
No more waiting for the National Allotment Society magazine to be passed round your fellow plot holders every quarter; get a nice clean copy all to yourself – just £10 a year for members or £15 for non-members for 4 issues.
Seasonal growing advice from experts Competitions Membership news from your region Opportunities to submit articles Legal updates
Discounts and offers
RECEIVE YOUR OWN PERSONAL COPY OF ALLOTMENT & LEISURE GARDENER DIRECT TO YOUR DOOR
MEMBERS NON-MEMBERS £10 FOR 4 ISSUES £15 FOR 4 ISSUES
Call 01536 266576 for further information or email: natsoc@nsalg.org.uk
Luton Food Plan
Suliman Rafiq and Elizabeth Bailey from Luton Council’s Public Health Team explain how nurturing local people’s enthusiasm for growing can have significant health and wellbeing benefits.
Getting the good people of Luton, from all of our communities, onto our allotments is a key part of the ambitious Luton Food
Plan, which wants to encourage townspeople to have a holistic understanding of healthy food from ‘fork to fork’. Ours is a wonderful, super diverse community, which unfortunately also has a number of pockets of serious deprivation and associated ill health, and we have been thinking laterally about how to make this better.
As readers will understand, there’s a wealth of evidence to show that spending more time in green spaces and having more contact with nature, plants and animals, can have huge benefits for our physical and mental wellbeing.
We know that we can all benefit from gardening and community food-growing projects, but we also know that for many people
in our community who live with challenging physical or mental
health problems, these activities can be especially beneficial. They can relieve the symptoms of serious illnesses, help prevent the development of some conditions, and introduce people to a way of life that can help them to improve their wellbeing in the longer term. A community consultation at the end of last year, where we went out to speak to many people, showed a surprising appetite for growing across our communities, from Bangladeshi prize marrow contests
to Roma people wanting to grow the specific leaves needed for the traditional ‘sarmale’ dish. The urge is there, and we need and want to nurture it.
Suliman said: “We were genuinely astonished to find the level of enthusiasm for growing out there, from rows of herbs on kitchen windowsills to seriously competitive veg growing. This really needs to be encouraged. We have unused allotments and we’d love to see them taken up.”
Elizabeth added: “One great thing about Luton is our really rich food culture, from multiple cultures. All of this cuisine can be served in healthy ways, in many instances using locally grown produce. And we can use food as a language to talk to each other and learn”.
To support this, as part of the Luton Food Plan, the council and its partners are promoting ‘greening the borough’ and ‘growing your own’ fruit and vegetables through great schemes like ‘Food Hacks’ which teaches often disadvantaged young people about food production and preparation. We have been given a great deal of invaluable help by local partners and colleagues, including our colleague in our Parks and Gardens team, Paul Merryweather, who is a keen NAS member himself. In the spring we will be holding a community event to raise awareness of local allotment availability, and in particular, look to recruit local community leaders and volunteers who form the backbone of a thriving allotment culture.
For more information on our plan and what we are doing for the Luton Food Plan see: https://www.luton.gov.uk/Health_and_social_ care/health/Pages/luton-food-.plan.aspx
“We were genuinely astonished to find the level of enthusiasm for growing out there, from rows of herbs on kitchen windowsills to seriously competitive veg growing"
38
ALLOTMENT • & LEISURE GARDENER •
PRIZE DRAW EACH QUARTER
to win an individual subscription to this magazine for 12 months • See page 59
ALLOTMENT & LEISURE GARDENER • Issue42018
Inside: Allotment Shed of theYear results – p12 Planning Watch – p14 • Gardening from a wheelchair – p32