Many people are familiar with allotments, plots of ground rented by individuals from local authorities in order to cultivate vegetables (and sometimes fruit) for their own private domestic use. Middle aged to elderly Dublin city dwellers may remember a less affluent, but more self sufficient time when allotments created the opportunity to “grow for the table.” for countless families. Allotments sites were dotted throughout Dublin and other major cities. However, over the past twenty years, one could be forgiven for thinking that allotments had disappeared completely from Ireland.

Many British and other European towns and cities have continued this tradition of allotments or city/community gardens. It is somewhat surprising that here in Ireland, given our proximity to agricultural lifestyles, city vegetable growing became so unusual. By 2004 there were four surviving allotments sites left in Dublin. By comparison, Manchester has forty one.

Does this mean relatively few people in Dublin were interested in growing and eating home grown fresh produce? Or is it partly because the last remaining allotments sites were hidden away, poorly publicised, hardly maintained and being allowed to slowly head towards extinction?

While this question is hard to answer, recent signs suggest that change is in the air. There is renewed interest, globally, in growing food closer to home in general, and in cities in particular. This interest may be driven by factors such as disillusionment with mass produced food, the growing interest in organic gardening, and the need for localisation and lower “food miles”. It may be about the related quests for quality, flavour and freshness in food. The need for green space and a quiet environment in ever more populated and bustling cities and the factor of higher density housing with little or no gardens may also play a part.

Those of us who garden on South Dublin County Council allotments look forward to the 2006 season with renewed excitement, as no fewer than four new allotments locations are scheduled to open soon. This has come about, in no small measure, as a result of a local campaign which began two years ago to revive interest in allotments as a highly sustainable, increasingly relevant, and satisfying approach to food production.

For many years successive allotments sites in the SDCC area were situated on lands which were awaiting building development. This was the case with the last allotment site at Kishogue, Clondalkin, situated less than a mile from the Liffey Valley Shopping Centre. This 16 acre site, with approximately 130 plots, had been used for allotments for 10 years. It also had been zoned as development land, and was awaiting development for housing and related infrastructure.

We had no more than a vague undertaking in the Council’s last development plan saying that when this site was needed for development, the possibility of finding alternate locations would be considered. This left us in a precarious position with our somewhat endangered amenity. With astronomical land prices and increasing demand for local authority land for housing, we were facing an uncertain future.

The Benefits of Allotments
In 2004, when South Dublin County Council was drawing up a new development plan for 2006-2010, we put together submissions on allotments. In our submissions, we pointed out the benefits of allotments:

1. How allotments help to meet some of the social needs of citizens. There are no walls or hedges between plots: gardeners enjoy talking about their shared interest almost as much as growing produce.

2. Allotments meeting the environmental and activity needs of citizens: fresh air and exercise are seen as increasingly important to maintaining health.

3. Educational needs were also stressed: a place for children and others to learn about vegetable growing, for example.

4. Biodiversity: Because of the wide range of plants grown and habitats created for wildlife, allotments were shown as green oases in the “concrete jungle”.

Local politicians were asked to support the campaign and we continue to receive support from across the parties.

An ad hoc committee representing an embrionic ‘allotments association’ had meetings with the Council Departments most directly involved with allotments: The Development Department and the Parks /Landscape Services Department. Various ideas were discussed to try to create a more secure future for allotments.

South Dublin Allotments Association was then formed in May 2004 with the following aims:

• To represent the views of allotment holders on SDCC allotments sites
• To campaign for more allotments in local communities
• To promote allotment gardening as a healthy and sustainable activity
• To cooperate with other bodies interested in promoting allotments

At the end of 2004 the Council announced that the existing allotments site at Kishogue would be needed for a social housing scheme, and would close at the end of the 2005 season.

By then, however, it had committed itself in the new Development Plan to a more proactive approach to allotments. The plans included spreading them across the county rather than in one big site. A creative solution to the scarcity of available land was found by developing new allotments sites in some of the Council’s existing parks and planned parkland.

Three sites were proposed, at Tymon Park and Friarstown in Tallaght, and in Corkagh Park in Clondalkin.

All existing allotment holders were invited by the Council to a meeting to see the plans. An undertaking was given that each current holder would be offered a plot at one of three proposed new locations.

The Council said it would endeavour to find a fourth site for it’s new allotments scheme. By September a site at Palmerstown was found and it too is being developed on time for the 2006 season.

Although the total acreage of allotments is now less than it was on the original site at Kishogue, and the individual allotments will be smaller and more costly to rent (most will be 100-120 sq. metres and will cost €40 per annum) we look forward to the opportunity for a fresh start. The Council has made a large capital investment in the new allotments. The new facilities will be more permanent, in pleasant, accessible locations, on fully serviced sites with good infrastructure (water, composting facilities, car parking, secure perimeter fencing etc). Perhaps, more importantly, we can look forward to well run, thriving allotments and hopefully the success of these may open the door to others.

Campaigning for Allotments
If you would love to have an allotment and live in a town or city which has none (a most likely scenario!), or if those that exist are too far from home to make growing produce a feasible proposition, I suggest it is time to make your voice heard. You could begin at an individual level by writing to your local County Council (county managers are a good place to start!) and asking that the Council consider funding the setting up of allotments. You could suggest that they allocate responsibility to a particular Department and that they start a waiting list.

The thing to remember about allotments is that there is now considerable latent demand in the community (latent demand is defined here as referring to those who would take one if they knew they were available and how to apply). Make sure you send your letter by registered post and ask for an early response. You could send copies to local councillors and T.D.s and ask for their support. You could ask a supportive councillor that a question be tabled at a local Council meeting as to why there are no allotment facilities locally, unlike in other European towns and cities. All this creates an expectation that allotments should be part of the planning process and that every piece of available land need not be built on. You could remind politicians and administrators that once land is built on it is lost forever for the purpose of allotments.

Try to identify possibilities: some towns and cities have areas of unused or derelict land which for one reason or another will not likely be used for anything else in the short term.

If you already belong to a local community group which would have a particular interest in getting into allotment growing, all the better. You could check when the drafting of your local Council’s next Development Plan will be happening. Letters and submissions should illustrate the benefits allotments would bring to the community and how they fit with local authority goals and mission statements. Your local council’s Environment Awareness Officer or Local Agenda 21 representative may be supportive.

Meanwhile the best that current allotment holders can do is to fully enjoy our plots: caring for them as stewards of the land for future generations. We can allow our genuine enthusiasm to be seen and support other allotments initiatives. Hopefully, other local authorities too will help in reviving the fortunes of allotments in Ireland.

Michael Fox is an allotment holder and Chairperson of South Dublin Allotments Association.

Editor's note: Local Planet would welcome any good pictures of vegetable gardens and/or allotments.