A Really Good Garden Idea ?

With the price of food going up , more people want to grow their own vegetables and fruit. But a lot of modern gardens are really too small for this, and there’s often a waiting list to rent an allotment.

On the other hand , some people have a big garden but are either too frail – or too busy – to make the most of it.

So an idea in the Guardian last week seems rather a good one. It’s to have schemes that help garden-owners and frustrated vegetable growers get together, and share the produce:

“I grow as much at home as I can to try to save money on food bills, but we live in a flat so it’s mainly herbs and salad leaves in window boxes. When I heard about this scheme I was really interested. I had an interview about the kind of growing I wanted to do and got matched up. It’s worked so well.”
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The garden was initially overgrown; the owner was too busy with work commitments to look after it. They now share the planting and watering with two other women and divide the produce, which includes peas, beans, radishes, beetroot, potatoes, rocket, spinach and carrots.
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“I didn’t know much about gardening but I did a lot of research online and picked it up as I went along,” Gloster says. “Things like salad leaves and sweetcorn can be quite expensive, so we make a good saving there. And I keep or swap seeds for the following year to keep costs down.”

There’s a number of schemes operating. One is a national website called Landshare which is worth a look. But there are also some local schemes in different places – the Guardian article mentions Edinburgh, Totnes and Brighton.

Should we be thinking about having a similar scheme in our area? Or is there one already?