The joy of my new allotment

I was pleasantly surprised when I got an email from the Acton Gardening Association last October telling me that a plot had become available at the Bromyard allotments. I had put my name down so long ago, I’d completely forgotten. I asked if I could come and see the plot before making up my mind, and got a bit of a shock. It was strewn with weeds and discarded plastic and had what looked like a fly tip at one end. There were no crops apart from some potatoes and spring onions. I could see at a glance it would be a lot of work to get it into a fit state to plant some summer vegetables, not to mention looking after them once they were in the ground. ‘I’ll take it,’ I said.

I didn’t visit again until this April, by which time it resembled a little patch of wilderness. Meanwhile, the adjoining plot looked like a movie set from a Disney adaptation of a Beatrix Potter story. Everything was perfectly manicured and just so. Indeed, my allotment was by some distance the most overgrown in the entire area. I’d better get to work.

It took me four weekends to clear the weeds, pick out the bits of plastic and remove the fly tip. I left the potatoes and spring onions and divided the remaining space between tomatoes, courgettes and runner beans, all of which I bought in the allotment shop. It was with no little sense of satisfaction that I stood back and admired my handiwork. I still couldn’t hold a candle to my neighbour – who turned out to be a literal set designer called Laura – but at least my plot no longer looked like a motorway verge in Essex.