Lecture by Allan Rees

The Allotment Gardener of the Future Trends Needs & Wishes

We need to form an analysis of where we have come from and where in future we want to progress.

In the UK Allotment Gardeners are proud of their heritage and only last week celebrated National Allotment Week. It is a celebration of the contribution made by allotment gardeners who have served their community in past years, whilst raising public awareness of what can be produced on a small parcel of land.

Allotments as we know them today in the UK emerged around 1750 for the purpose of cultivating land for the poor. Waste land near the poor house was used to benefit those working in that environment. There was also a requisite for the gardener to have animals allowing again the poor an opportunity to become more efficient, in what is produced for consumption by them.

Has the Allotment gardener changed during the time between 1750 and today? YES, in some respects they have how you may ask? I looked back to past times and found that women worked the fields then and during the wars, as they are starting to do again; it has not always been a man thing. Up until the 1960s gardening was on the curriculum so we were taught in school how to grow various plants.

I remember as a child we kept all sorts of animals for consumption by the family. My mother worked in the garden along with the children of the house, this while my father worked long hours farming and mining.