If you haven’t got a garden and fancy a bit of the self sufficient Good Life on our green and pleasant land, then this is your week to get started. It’s National Allotments Week!

National allotments week is all about promoting the awareness and availability of allotments. It is also to protect our local allotments.

Did you know, for example, that if an authority believes there is a demand, it has a statutory duty to provide a sufficient quantity of plots and to let them to people living in its area?

That means, if there are no allotments in your area, you can get together six or more residents who want to use them and put forward a case to your local authority to provide them. Running an allotment, especially if you garden organically is an eco friendly and sustainable activity. It helps to preserve the land and attract wildlife as well as providing you and your family an ethical and frugal way to eat.

In our village we have a waiting list, so there’s no danger of lack of interest! It seems to be a natural way of life around here.

If you have an allotment, that National Society of Allotments and Leisure Gardeners limited (NSALG) are asking people to open their fields to the public, arrange group visits to allotment sites and exhibit their produce.

You can find out what is happening in your area, here.

To find out about your nearest allotments, contact your local authority – your Parish, Town, Borough, City or District Council.

This is a great time to get an allotment - you can still get a few things in the soil if you inherit a good plot, or you can spend the autumn getting the soil up together ready for spring planting.

There is nothing like the taste of home grown produce, and gardening is a great form of exercise for the entire family. With many children not recognising basic vegetables this is a great educational and fun experience.

In a recent poll of 200 children aged between 11 and 13, 35 percent couldn’t identify a bunch of celery; only 8 percent knew what a pomegranate was; nine out of 200 could recognize a turnip; only three out of 200 could say what an artichoke was; and more than 1 in 5 didn’t know what a potato looked like.

So slip on those wellies, grab a trowel and give your kids the education of a life time.

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