Faber & Faber

Michael Leapman writes ...

Allotments today are objects of envy and desire, with waiting lists stretching to infinity; yet it was not always thus. Since they were introduced in the nineteenth century, to provide fresh food and virtuous occupation for working people, their popularity has ebbed and flowed. Interest tailed off after the wartime 'Dig for Victory' campaign, until revived by the call for fresh, organic vegetables as part of a reaction against the pre-packaged supermarket culture.

My own allotment odyssey was sparked by an earlier peak in demand. In the winter of 1973/4 the combination of a strike by coal miners and a sharp increase in the price of oil provoked a widespread sense of impending doom. Factories went on a three-day week and power cuts meant that we shopped by candlelight. When winter turned to spring, panic buying set in as rumours circulated that supplies of almost everything were running out. There were shortages of sugar, salt, even toilet paper. Tens of thousands of people concluded that the only way to provide for their families was to ensure a private, self-generated food supply. By the spring the press was reporting a rush for allotments, and soon waiting lists began to swell.

I was then the editor of the Diary column in The Times. In those days the Diary was not what would be recognised today as a gossip column, principally because the paper’s editor was averse to gossip. It was instead a mixture of quirky items, including some where I would take an unconventional approach to topics in the news. Reading of the run on allotments, I decided to dig deeper into the story by applying for one; even though my and my wife’s horticultural skills were already being tested to the limit by grappling with the narrow garden behind our south London terraced house.

I made phone calls to local authorities, British Rail and less likely allotment-granting bodies, always with the same response. 'You must be joking,' was the gist of it. As I was about to give up, someone mentioned that Thames Water owned allotments at the back of Brixton waterworks, a couple of miles from of where we live. Their response was more positive: they were about to reallocate some disused plots. The following March, when I had forgotten all about it, a letter arrived telling me that I could become the tenant of plot 13a so long as I could stump up the rent - then running at 35p a year.

At the waterworks we were led to a patch so overgrown that we could not tell where it ended and the adjoining path - equally overgrown - began. It was in a powerfully atmospheric location: the grim roof-line of Brixton prison a few hundred yards to the south and, to the east, a picturesque windmill, a unique survivor so close to central London. An elderly man on a nearby plot confided that mine had not been worked for ten years, because the former owner had become too obese to dig. He also expressed scepticism about our staying power. He had seen young folk like us arrive brimful of enthusiasm, only to disappear after a few weeks, unwilling to commit the necessary time and effort. Our determination to defy the man’s prediction is a principal reason why we still cultivate the plot 36 years later, albeit at a much higher rent. 

When I started writing in The Times Diary about our first fumbling efforts to acquire green fingers, I was inundated with letters offering detailed advice about how to proceed, what to sow and what not to sow, some readers even enclosing packets of seed. After several weeks digging out the weeds we put some of this advice into practice and I reported back on the results, boasting shamelessly about our few successes as well as admitting to failures. Not only was the allotment producing fare for our dinner table - however modest at first - but it was providing entertainment for readers; a kind of horticultural soap opera, an everyday story of incompetent urban sod-turners, with a cast of real-life characters including the impeccable 'ace cultivator' on the neighbouring plot.

For two growing seasons I published regular breezy updates on our battles with nature and our interaction with our fellow toilers. I could tell it had become a cult when a publisher invited me to turn the Diary items into a full-blown horticultural saga. One Man and His Plot, my first book, duly burst into flower in 1976 and seemed to catch the prevailing mood: one reviewer suggested that I had become 'the belle-lettriste of the vegetable garden'. Be that as it may, the allotment continues to support both weeds and vegetables and the occasional newspaper column, and it is gratifying to know that One Man and His Plot has turned out to be a hardy perennial rather than a one-season wonder.