Chairman Chris Zydeveld

ALLOTMENT GARDENING IS IMPORTANT - Chris Zijdeveld, chairman AVVN

In most countries the importance of allotment gardens is largely unknown or underestimated at least. It is urgent to chance this situation drasticly.

In spite of the fact that some countries have laws to protect and promote allotment gardens, the importance of these gardens seems not (not yet or no more) to be recognised everywhere and by everyone.

On the contrary: to often allotments are considered to be easy targets if a new building site has to be developed. This ignores the fact that ideally seen allotment gardens should be an integral part of the urban environment, instead of only being pushed to the outskirts.

There are successful examples where allotments reinforce urban communities, being an integral part of it, cooperating with neighbours and being a valuable and appreciated part of their environment. Not only in housing areas, but even in an area with office buildings.

This one of the reasons to organise the 2014 International Congress in Utrecht where impressive and succesful examples exist in reality.

In general allotment gardens are important because:

• gardeners still have a close contact with nature – this is more important in a society where people live more and more in an industrialised environment
• gardeners know and show that food grows from the earth – this is more important in a society where more and more children think food comes from factories
• allotment gardeners in most cases form a close community where people cooperate in close contact with each other – this is more important in a society where people have looser and looser/ lesser and lesser contact with others
• gardeners facilitate biodiversity in different ways; they keep many varieties of food crops alive and may on their allotment promote harmony with natural species – this is more and more important in a society that tends to industrialise nature and threat the natural environment
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