Crowe Garden Design - Bespoke Garden Design In Essex

Oh the joy, the unbridled joy, seed time. All across the country the allotmenteers are out in force, digging, raking, and preparing that fine tilth in readiness for the sowing of the seed for abundant crops later this season. Being an allotment holder has never been more popular, long waiting lists to gain a plot, the BBC Dig In campaign announced on the BBC Gardeners World programme and a sense of ‘digging for victory’, ‘we shall overcome any adversity’.

During the times of plenty those new to the allotment were seen as a little avant-garde, why are they ‘ploughing their furrow’ when all around is plentiful and times are good. Now though the thinking is, join them, something for nothing, a free meal. Not quite but the change in attitude is there. When the times become plentiful again the media hype will move on, attention will be focussed on the next set of ‘King’s New Clothes’ and allotments will slip back asleep.

The question remains why people have an allotment at all when they may have a garden of their own. Those with no garden, a simple balcony or roof terrace can obviously gain much from their allotted ‘chain’ but those with a garden surely are using that for their new enthusiasm. This would leave the allotment spaces, limited as they are, for those who have perhaps a ‘greater’ need.

It is perhaps that those who have a garden wish it to remain a separate entity, they do not quite want to push the boundaries to the limits of Tom and Barbara in 1970’s Surbiton (The Good Life). Maybe they have a secret Margo and Jerry dominant gene that cannot quite allow them to combine (albeit in a less extreme way than Tom and Barbara) the ornamental with the ‘agricultural’ garden style. It could just be that society has no stomach for the traditional cottage garden style where a riotous mix of vegetables, herbs and ornamental blooms sit chaotically in order within a garden.

Whatever the thinking the zeitgeist is, to grow your own, be more organically aware and enjoy the benefits of the process of growing food. No doubt the obsession with reinterpreting the past for the now will see not only the return of Reginald Perrin on BBC but the inevitable rebirth and remake of The Good Life with a fresh trendy Tom, Barbara, Jerry and an irrepressible Margo.

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