Page 72 - ALG Issue 3 2019

London
London
REPRESENTATIVE
Mr Jeff Barber
39 Seagry Road, London E11 2NH 07900 328797 jbarber.nas@gmail.com
MENTOR
Grant Smith
London
0845 478 6351 grantsmith.nas@gmail.com
MENTOR
Paula Owen
London
07838 344408 powen.nas@gmail.com
If you are on the waiting list...
Tower Hamlets is one of the London boroughs with few allotment sites. The GLA report of some thirteen years ago mentions just seven sites in Tower Hamlets with only the City of London, Westminster, Kensington & Chelsea, and Hammersmith & Fulham having lower totals. So, the two sites on the Isle of Dogs within the Mudchute City Farm are very important to have, and equally, unsurprisingly have a waiting list larger that the number of plots
on the two areas involved. Such a significant waiting list is not entirely an untroubled blessing. Applicants lose interest or lose heart or move away so the challenge lies in trying to maintain, for each person on the waiting list,
a light at the end of what might be a rather long tunnel.
Some associations actually charge for being on their waiting list – nothing known to me asks for anything more than a very nominal charge, but a charge nonetheless. Others take care to maintain the interest of their applicants by inviting them to the social events
of the association and keeping them in their social network. But the Isle of Dogs and District Association has found a very metropolitan answer to this problem. Through the efforts and contacts of some of its members, it has managed to have a small part of
the Roof Garden at Crossrail Place in the Canary Wharf part of Docklands, planted as a vegetable growing space. Canary Wharf Management agreed to have this in place and it was planted
up on 29th April. Tatiana Nye, Paula Owen and Martyn Daniels were the main movers and shakers bringing this to fruition. But the main work is being done by volunteers already on the Isle of Dogs waiting list to give them a taste of growing vegetables. The environment of the roof garden is rather similar
to an unheated greenhouse, with minimum temperatures a significant few degrees higher, virtually no winds to contend with, and a discreet piped supply of water through the ground. This space has been made available for this growing season.
But the conclusion to be reached from this exercise is a universal one. People on waiting lists are in effect part of
the organisation, not a set of separate beings ‘out there’. A sense of welcome before they actually become members is likely to have dividends when they actually become members. This initiative by the Isle of Dogs Association does demonstrate a novel way of keeping the interest and commitment of the people waiting for an allotment.
Jeff Barber
... it has managed to have a small part of the Roof Garden at Crossrail Place
in the Canary Wharf
72 Allotment and Leisure Gardener