Page 30 - ALG Issue 4 2020

letter
New sites and the importance of topsoil
Dear Members,
When I first started as a volunteer
for the NAS back in the early 2000s, demand for allotments was just starting to pick up again after a very long period of decline. I found myself as Regional Representative and later as Regional Mentor, being asked for help from communities who wanted allotments in order to satisfy that demand. Coming from a predominantly rural area, any land available was usually a parcel of agricultural land, often grass that may have had grazing animals for generations, ideal for allotments.
This has been the case on most if not all of the 60 plus sites I have been privileged to help create. However,
in recent years I have noticed that increasingly new allotment space often becomes available as a result of S106 orders on new building developments. This is great but sadly can often end
up creating a major problem. In
many areas where this happens the land in question will be some form
of agricultural land as described previously, but then it becomes part
of a large building site. Common practice on such sites will be to remove the topsoil, the plant machinery will compact the soil, and the building work will contaminate the area with oil, old broken bricks and concrete.
After all this has happened, the creation of the allotment site is often left to the parish or town council, or perhaps the local allotment association and they find themselves with a site that is not
fit for purpose. This of course will not apply to a brown field site but when it is a green field site, I feel the best solution would be firstly to take the creation of the allotment site into consideration in the very early drawing and design stage. This would mean that at pre-works stage that area of land destined for allotment use is physically fenced off,
I feel strongly that keeping the soil untouched on building sites would be the best thing we can do for future generations
with maybe a native hedge planted, not subject to major underground works and left in its original state. The prime objective is to minimise any soil disturbance so that, after all the works are complete, the site can be handed over untouched.
I feel strongly that keeping the soil untouched on building sites would
be the best thing we can do for future generations. The original top soil would have taken hundreds of years to form and be suitable for successful sustained growing; why destroy it in a very short time – lost for ever, just through lack of planning and understanding the simple needs of an allotment plot?
I believe that each and every one of us in NAS should do all we can to stop future allotment land being permanently spoilt in such a way.
Allan Cavill,
South West Regional Mentor
30 Allotment and Leisure Gardener