Articles | National Trust land for allotments

National Trust land for allotments

Published: Thursday, 19 February 2009, 10:25AM

The National Trust is creating 1,000 allotments for people to grow their own fruit and vegetables.

Responding to the growing interest in food provenance and the cash-saving benefits growing your own food brings, the Trust hopes to get local people involved in developing the plots of land as well as taking advantage of lottery money to get the scheme going.

Green-fingered growers will be able to get their hands on one of the plots through the Landshare website set up by TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall which matches up allotments to suitable gardeners.

They will be available at 40 different locations in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and will include traditional allotments and walled gardens at National Trust properties.

As part of the initiative the Trust is also turning over the back garden of its central London office in Queen Anne's Gate to be an allotment for staff to use.

Gardener Monty Don, who is backing the scheme, said: "Allotments connect ordinary people to the beauty and richness of growing things; in an age of deceit and spin and collapse there is absolute integrity about growing food."

The Trust's director general Dame Fiona Reynolds said: "There's something in the air. More and more people want to grow their own fruit and vegetables.

"This isn't just about saving money - it's really satisfying to sow seeds and harvest the fruit and veg of your labour.

"By creating new growing spaces the National Trust can help people to start growing for the first time."

Around 100,000 people are currently on the waiting list for allotments countrywide.