Page 61 - ALG 1.21

2021 – The Year of the Allotment
Workplace Allotment at Atwood Drive Allotments
J Murphy & Sons has started growing its
own vegetables on an allotment close to one
of its construction sites in Bristol, with the produce going to the site canteen to help
feed site workers. The contractor is leading
the construction of a new 6.5km relief sewer pipeline, connecting Bristol’s existing trunk sewer in Lawrence Weston to the Frome Valley relief sewer near Cribbs Causeway, which will direct waste more efficiently around North Bristol to the Wessex Water recycling centre
in Avonmouth. The majority of the sewer will
be constructed by tunnelling underground
using a tunnel boring machine, which will run underneath a number of schools and other sensitive buildings, including the M5 motorway and Network Rail’s Henbury Loop freight railway.
The work has involved many members of the team working away from home for long periods of time. Site supervisor, Shaun Brookbanks, a keen gardener and beekeeper, has helped to set up the site allotment. Murphy, which had to relocate some of the local allotments as part
of the work, secured the space for Brookbanks to use some of the previously unused land to start his own vegetable patch after applying for permission from client Wessex Water. Murphy’s also donated a 32ft shipping container to the plotholders for their use.
The plot, which measures about 30m x 10m, has been cleared of debris, rotovated and crops planted. So far, the team has planted runner beans, lettuce, carrots, turnips, beetroot, Swiss chard, courgette plants and striped tomato plants, spring onions and potatoes. The harvest has produced enough vegetables to support
the on-site canteen, plus leftovers to share with site staff. Meanwhile, the new site chef is a local man, made unemployed due to the covid-19 pandemic. Shaun plans to maintain the site over the winter period and start early spring to make the most of next year’s growing season.
Chris Mostyn, Head of Marketing and Communications, Murphy’s
This article originally appeared in https://www. constructionmanagermagazine.com/. Many thanks for the permission to reproduce in our members magazine.
As I write this article on a wet November day in 2020, there are four vaccines going through the final stage of being passed by various Medical Standards Boards. Let us hope that these vaccines are effective and that by this time next year, life will be returning to normal for all of us.
2020 was the year the world changed, perhaps forever. We have seen planes land, offload their passengers, taxi
to the side of runways, park up and not take off again. Millions of daily commutes by car came to an end as working from home became a way
of life. Cruise ships and ocean liners docked, dropped anchor and their giant engines fell silent. Train timetables were cut to a minimum as home workers
no longer commuted into our towns and cities. All of the usual modes of transport used by billions every day came to a standstill. Life changed for everyone.
People were encouraged to take
daily exercise, and, as they did so, something remarkable happened; they re-engaged with nature, wildlife and
the environment. As the days passed, remarks were made about the sky being bluer, birdsong being louder, horizons seeming sharper to the eye. Venetians woke to see fish in their canals for the first time in decades, people living in
the Northern Indian state of Punjab were awestruck to wake up and, for the first time in 30 years, be able to see the Himalayas over 100 miles away, some seeing the mountain range for the first time in their lives! Used as they were
to living in an area so polluted that this magnificent spectacle was obscured. In addition, the largest hole ever seen in the ozone layer over the Arctic closed.
For the first time, people were told not to go to work and, as a result of this re-engagement with nature, combined with an eagerness to do something about climate change and reduce their carbon footprint, there were over 500,000 enquiries about getting an allotment.
Anyone who watched Sir David Attenborough’s ‘Extinction - The Facts’ will know that if we all take action now,
there is still a chance for planet Earth and for us. Our pollinating insects ensure the delivery of the majority of our food and without them our lives will change dramatically.
Sir Albert Einstein is often misquoted as saying that: “Without bees, man could only survive between four and seven years.” What he actually said was: “Remove the bee from the earth and
at the same stroke you remove at least one hundred thousand plants that will not survive.” Mother Nature recovered a little during lockdown, but more needs to be done. We all need to play our part in helping her sustain that recovery.
Allotment associations across the country are going to be responsible for giving Mother Nature some of that extra help she needs, not only to sustain that recovery but to accelerate it. Looking ahead five years, wouldn’t it be a feather in the cap of every member of the NAS to be able to turn around and say that they had made an important contribution to the recovery of insect populations nationwide?
In 2019 and 2020 I was invited to speak in Plymouth and Yeovil. I was impressed by the number of people that came up to me afterwards to say that wildlife and the environment were at the top of their list of priorities. Together we can make a big difference, together we can help reduce the catastrophic decline
of our insect populations, together we can raise the importance of allotments across the country and, together, we can make 2021 the most important year for the allotment movement since the end of World War II.
Together – let’s make 2021 the Year of the Allotment!
Tim Callard, Chairman NAS SWB
Allotment and Leisure Gardener 61