allotments.

Marguerite. I think all UK members will know what an allotment is. It's a strip of land not attached (sometimes not even near) to your home. There are usually lots of them on a large area of land. If you don't have a decent garden at home you can rent one for growing, usually vegetables for home consumption but really anything you want to.

The problem is Widescreen that allotments are usually in or close to a town so the land is far too valuable to lease out for a peppercorn rent. You don't actually give us your location (or anything at all really) on your 'about me' page so it is totally impossible to advise you. I know we in our town once had two large allotment areas. The council closed one and sold the land for development. People started a campaign so they immediately closed the other area and sold that as well. The trouble is, more people will think it is better to get more money in the town/city coffers than to please a few gardeners. And when the campaign started this became obvious.

Hi Widescreen,
Look around in your area to see if you can find a large house with a neglected garden, ask the owner if you can rent a small part of their back garden, if you are not succesful at this, search for a peice of a farmers field.
This is only a suggestion, it is always difficult to find allotment spaces. Do you have an allotment association near you which you could join. Good Luck.

I was under the impression that councils were legally obliged to provide at least some allotments. May I suggest you contact the RHS (www.rhs.org.uk) who would be able to confirm this. Good luck

I think you are about 30 years out of date Andrew. It was the law in times of food hardship but certainly when I was a local councillor there was no requirement. We were obliged to provide camping spots for Romany caravans but not allotments. It's a shame. For the bit of land it would take I think the economy could manage it. If you find differently then I'm going back into politics. But........