Page 48 - ALG Issue 4 2020

West Midlands
Shropshire, Staffordshire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Warwickshire
ITN sent a cameraman and a reporter and were with us for about four hours. Before they started filming, they
said: “We’ve just got to Skype Alan Titchmarsh first” which made us all laugh! When they were finally ready, they interviewed and filmed one of our newest plotholders, Sasha, and her young daughter Ava Rose, who got their plot at the end of March. Sasha and her family had spent a lot of time digging/ weeding and planting up their plot during lockdown and she had remarked to me that it had certainly helped keep her sanity! They are now starting to enjoy the fruits of their hard labour after one or two hiccups along the way! She remarked to the interviewer that it is all a learning curve, but that they’re learning together.
Our allotments, like many up and down the land, are a mix of beginners and
old timers. Liz, who took over her plot from her husband when he sadly died
a few years ago, remarked: “You come to the plot and just lose yourself... everyone is busy doing their own plots, but you just shout to one another and have a good old chinwag!” Martin (our chairman) commented “...if you mention allotments to most people, they think
of grumpy old men with flat caps and cabbages! But our community has got together – young and old, and what’s been fantastic is that we’ve found a lot of young able-bodied people looking after the older ones.”
It was a lovely day showing off our plots and promoting allotment life! It
gave us all quite a buzz! It culminated into less than a two-minute clip at the end of the national news, with Stacey, the reporter, concluding with these words: “The growing appreciation of the natural world might just turn out to be a legacy of the lockdown.” I think she’s right – the extra time we’ve all had due to lockdown has certainly made us all appreciate our outside spaces, whether they are an allotment, our gardens or going for a walk in the countryside.
As has been said many times during this pandemic: “We are living in
You come to the plot and just lose yourself...
unprecedented times” ... which, if we let it, could seriously damage our mental health. Our plots have certainly been our little havens – a safe place in these troubled times!
Julie Doubleday,
Binley Woods Allotments, Coventry
48 Allotment and Leisure Gardener