Page 51 - ALG Issue 2 2022

Eastern
Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, Essex, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire
Welcome to our new members...
Broomfield Allotment Association
Hardwick Allotment Association
Northchurch Allotment Association
Oakington & Westwick Allotment Society Saddleback Lane Allotment Society
Upwood & Raveleys Community Allotment Assoc 14 Individuals
Bassingbourn cum Kneesworth Parish Council Cockfield Parish Council
Eye Parish Council
Fordham Parish Council
Lavenham Parish Council
REPRESENTATIVE
Mr Ray How
5 Dalys Road, Rochford, Essex SS4 1RA
07720 719224 ray.how@btopenworld.com
A very special place
MENTOR
Mark Vincent
mvincent.nas@gmail.com
55 years ago, my Geography teacher said that, technically, East Anglia is a desert, as it averages less than 30cm of rain a year. Incoming clouds hit Welsh mountains and drop most of their water, then cross England, dropping more, until by the time they get to Suffolk, there is no water left to wring out.
The Belstead Allotment Field was once a sandy lakebed where water from
ice age glaciers gathered. There were fish, crabs, hyenas, even hippos and mammoths. As the glaciers melted, they dropped all sorts of different stones, sandstone, limestone, flint. I find fossils, and the remains of crab shells and cockles and whelks. We even have a period named after us: the “Ipswichian Period” some 120,000 years ago, which was one of the warm spikes during the ice age (when, incidentally, summer temperatures exceeded those we are now experiencing).
So, I garden on a nationally important site, which was once a lake and is
now, technically, a desert and I grow quinces and apples, cabbages, and carrots and more than 80 other different fruits and vegetables. Nature slowly made the soil on the top of the sand and, more recently, a generation of
people have added compost, manure, and leaf-mould. I mulch, I manure and sometimes I have to water, but generally nature is a better gardener than I am. Just as I feed the birds, but a blue-tit needs to find 100 caterpillars every day for each chick in the nest. I can’t do that.
People think of an allotment as a place to grow vegetables. But is that all it is? I think you’ll agree there’s more to it than that.
I claim to grow vegetables, but we all know they actually grow themselves. We plant the seed, cover it, water
it, but they do the rest. Beyond a bit more water now and then, removing weeds which might smother them, they do it themselves. Which is just as well because amongst other things
an allotment is a safe place, when there is a Covid epidemic, for exercise and socially-distanced conversations. Chatting with other people. Also, discussing the world’s problems over tea and cake and setting it all to rights. Boris should come to our cabinet meetings; we know we can run the country while our vegetables grow. We get exercise, are surrounded by plants and flowers, and eat food which has barely travelled one mile between plot
I claim
to grow vegetables, but we all know they actually grow themselves. We plant the seed, cover it, water it, but they do the rest.
and plate. Saving the planet! No wonder we have a waiting list.
An allotment is a calm and kind place where you can sit under a tree and watch the grass grow, although really you ought to be weeding that grass out, because that’s supposed to be where the leeks are going this year. But the leeks don’t mind, so why should you?
I can walk to my allotment through
a wood, or I can drive down a lane where the trees meet overhead, and everyone should have a commute to work like that. I can work very hard,
or very little, the plants (especially
the weeds) will still grow; I can eat an apple straight from the tree, or a carrot pulled and rinsed, or a handful of fresh raspberries.
We have our problems, but we try to support one another; to be the best gardeners, neighbours, friends that we can be. Some of our plotholders speak little English, but if they smile and wave that’s a good start. By the day’s end, we have fresh fruit and vegetables to share. I think life is getting pretty close to perfection.
Just, not until I get that last corner, over there, weeded and edged...
Maybe tomorrow...
Diane Low, Plot 57 Belstead Allotments, Ipswich, Suffolk
Allotment and Leisure Gardener 51