Page 5 - ALG Issue 2 2019
P. 5

                                                                                                                                                   President’s
scribblings
It has been very encouraging just recently, with Monty Don stating how gardening can help with the state of your mind, TV programmes that have talked about how gardening can help with back pain, and of how eating all the healthy fresh vegetables can save money for the NHS and could lead towards a healthier Nation. Of course, as allotment gardeners we know
all of these benefits anyway, but it’s good the message is getting out there and perhaps it will ensure our sites remain full.
Well, if we thought last year’s weather was fickle this last month has been beyond belief, enabling our beds to be prepared for the spring planting. It’s very tempting and many are starting sowing already. I don’t have a heated greenhouse and tend to wait until the weather warms up before starting in earnest. A new year and I have just paid all my subscriptions to the other organisations I belong to; one of them is charging over 16 times the price of the NAS subscription and I get very little more for my money. I do find
it difficult to comprehend how our members can still moan about our subscription fee – even the smallest organisation I belong to is charging over £12. Please encourage others to join us, the more members we have the greater the impact we will have,
especially when fighting allotment disposal.
Following on from that, the amount
of work that goes on at Head Office, especially with legal and disposal of site issues, is staggering. I have been following one disposal application recently and the amount of time, research and compiling of evidence just to make a statement in support of the allotments is colossal.
Hopefully soon we shall be in a position to issue a code of conduct guide for associations and this
will reduce the many complaints (sometimes petty or personality clashes) received from members.
I’ve always said that with proper paperwork in place many of the issues on sites would not arise.
On a brighter note, in my region
of Yorkshire our new name NAS Yorkshire attracted many new faces and more participants to our meeting. The Federations in the region have agreed to try and see how the other half works by visiting each other’s Federation meetings (more about
that on the Yorkshire page in this magazine). One of the comments quite often heard at the end of a meeting is that you can always learn something new from others, which is very true,
Well, if we thought last year’s weather was fickle this last month has been beyond belief
and hopefully it will lead to a more uniform approach to running our allotments.
I shall be attending a great number of Flower and Vegetable Shows this year to promote our wonderful organisation but this year will be different. I already do a double act at the Harrogate Flower Shows with a colleague of mine Martin Walker (who designed most
of the Leeds City Council gardens
at Chelsea) called ‘Shed Talk’. I am, however, very excited as we have been invited to talk on the NAS stand at the Gardeners World Live at Birmingham with a multitude of other high-profile speakers. I think there may be more about this exciting event in the magazine.
May I remind sites that if you think your site would qualify to be included in the International Good Sites Guide please let me or your Regional Representative know. Whilst on this subject, although we have passed the deadline please consider making an application for the very prestigious International Diploma. Details can
be found on our website and in the International Allotments Office Magazine, Hyphen 66.
Happy Gardening! Phil Gomersall
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     Allotment and Leisure Gardener 5
































































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