UK: ‘The courgettes were so good last year, I got a tattoo of one’: life on a Birmingham allotment

A city of welly-wearers, Birmingham has more allotments than any other UK local authority – some of its keen plotholders tell us why

By Rebecca Nicholson

Excerpt:

Birmingham has a vibrant, multicultural, transgenerational allotment community. The Birmingham Allotment Project has spent the last three years documenting it, holding an exhibition last year at the Birmingham Library and building a wonderful website stuffed with oral histories, case studies and photographs. According to the council, there are nearly 7,000 plots in the city, across 113 different sites, the most of any local authority in the UK. Each has its own character, and over the course of the day I start to get the gossip. There is talk of sites that are neater, quieter, boozier, but Dads Lane is proud of its identity. “I put a net over my cherry tree one year, but it just looked horrible,” says Bryan. “I thought, bloody let the birds have the cherries. I don’t need them.”

John came to Dads Lane in 2003, when it was mainly older men, but now it’s more diverse, with younger people, families and friends taking on plots together. And this is not the kind of place that keeps a judgmental eye on your weeds. There’s only one rule here, says Bryan. “The rule is, do something.”

Emma took on her plot in January 2023. She is a single mother to three children, and was working full-time as a bookkeeper, so for a while, she couldn’t get to the allotment as often as she wanted to. Like many first-timers, she began to get overwhelmed. “It’s just so big, isn’t it? With how busy I was, I just wasn’t getting out to it.”

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