The Rise, Fall and Revival of the Allotment

A An allotment is a small plot of land, usually rented from a local council for a modest annual fee, on which ordinary people grow fruit, vegetables and flowers for their own use. The idea took shape in Britain during the nineteenth century, when industrialisation drew enormous numbers of rural labourers into crowded, smoky towns. Cut off from the countryside and often poorly paid, factory workers had little access to fresh food, and social reformers argued that a patch of ground would improve both their diet and their health. Landowners, churches and charities began to set aside strips of land at the edges of towns, and the movement gained legal force in 1908, when a new Act of Parliament obliged local councils to provide allotments wherever enough residents demanded them.

B It was war, however, that turned a modest social experiment into a national institution. During both world wars, Britain's food imports were threatened by blockade, and the government urged civilians to turn every spare scrap of land into a vegetable garden. The 'Dig for Victory' campaign of the Second World War became one of the most successful publicity drives ever run by a British government. Public parks, sports grounds, front lawns and even railway embankments were dug up and planted with potatoes, carrots and cabbages. By 1943 there were roughly 1.4 million allotment plots in cultivation, and it has been estimated that home and allotment growers were producing around a tenth of the nation's food. Growing vegetables had become, quite literally, a patriotic duty.

C The decades after 1945 told a very different story. As rationing ended and incomes rose, supermarkets began to offer cheap food all year round, and the effort of digging a plot in all weathers came to seem pointless to many families. Gardening acquired an old-fashioned image, associated with elderly men in flat caps rather than with busy young households, and television, cars and package holidays competed for people's free time. Plot numbers collapsed to a fraction of their wartime peak. Councils, short of money and under pressure to find land, quietly sold off allotment sites for housing, and each site lost was, in practice, lost for ever.

D Around the turn of the twenty-first century, the decline suddenly reversed. Food scares and rising prices made shoppers curious about where their meals came from, and many decided that the only way to be sure was to grow the food themselves. Concern about pesticides, packaging and the distance food travels gave the allotment a distinctly modern appeal, and television cookery and gardening programmes made growing vegetables fashionable again for the first time in half a century. Demand soon outstripped supply: in many cities, would-be gardeners now spend years on a waiting list before a plot becomes available, a situation that would have astonished the councils who once struggled to find tenants.

E Researchers have become increasingly interested in what allotments do for the people who work them. The physical benefits are obvious enough — digging, weeding and carrying water are steady, moderate exercise — but studies repeatedly point to effects on mental wellbeing that are harder to measure and possibly more important. A plot offers fresh air, contact with nature and a clear sense of progress through the seasons, all of which appear to reduce stress. Just as valuable is the social side: an allotment site throws together people of different ages, occupations and backgrounds who would otherwise never meet, and the swapping of seeds, advice and surplus courgettes builds friendships that spill over into the wider neighbourhood.

F Yet the pressure on urban land that destroyed so many sites in the last century has not gone away. A well-placed allotment site may be worth many millions as building land, and cash-strapped councils are still tempted to sell. Campaigners respond that once land is built on it never returns to cultivation, and they are pressing for stronger legal protection for existing sites. At the same time, growers are finding inventive answers of their own: vegetables are now raised in containers on supermarket roofs, in shared community gardens, and on 'meanwhile' plots — patches of cleared ground lent to growers until developers are ready to build. The allotment has survived war, neglect and the supermarket age; its next test will be the price of the very ground it stands on.