scottish allotments newsletter · start of the 2019 growing season . new glenwood allotments opened...

© Scottish Allotments and Gardens Society April 2019

Scottish Allotments Newsletter

Newsletter April 2019 Issue 37

Published by the Scottish

Allotments and Gardens Society

Scotland: A Good Food Nation?

The Good Food Nation policy sets an excellent vision for Scotland: that by 2025 Scotland will be “a Good Food Nation, where people from every walk of life take pride and pleasure in, and benefit from, the food they produce, buy, cook, serve, and eat each day” But what exactly does this mean in practical terms? What wil the bill actually do? As mentioned on our Facebook Page and web site the proposals for a Good Food Nation bill have been put out for a consultation that closes on April 19th. The consultation paper lists eight bullet points to clarify this concept. Some of the points highlight the problems of implementation. For ex-ample “Everyone in Scotland has ready access to the healthy, nutritious food they need.” Currently we have people living in neighbourhoods where fresh food is locally unobtainable or who are grate-ful to exist on canned food from Food Banks. It would be wonderful to believe that by 2025 this would be history. Sadly well meaning bullet points might not be enough. The Food Industry is a very important part of the Scottish economy. The bullet point “Scottish pro-ducers ensure that what they produce is increas-

ingly healthy and environmentally sound” makes excellent sense and is a recognition of this fact. However ‘Grow Your Own’ enthusiasts, which de-scribes SAGS members among many others, might have found the total lack of any inclusion of non commercial growing of fruit and vegetables, or indeed bee keeping, to be somewhat disappoint-ing. There is no mention, in the bullet points, of access to the sort of horticultural and gardening education that can at least allow all people to know what serious growing involves. No mention of enabling people to make an informed decision about whether they want to get involved in genu-inely producing their own healthy food. If you have not had the time or inclination to fill in the consultation document it is still possible to try to influence the emphasis of the bill. It would be great if many SAGS members could write or email their own MSPs. Tell them that Good Food is eve-ryone’s responsibility. That food quality should not be left up to government and commercial food producers. That everyone should have the experi-ence to know what is involved in producing our Good Food.

SCIO Update As indicated in the last Newsletter SAGS is undertaking a process to change from being an unincor-porated association to becoming a SCIO. As part of this process we would like to know what ‘services’ SAGS may offer to its members in future. To inform this process we are inviting you to make your suggestions. In the near future there will be a Survey Monkey survey on line accessed from our web site (www.sags.org.uk) and Facebook page where you can make your suggestions.


Allotments round Scotland.........

Fife

Good news for Fife allotment gardeners

Silverburn Allotments Reopen

Silverburn Allotments were constructed in 2017 and opened in January 2018 as part of the council’s planned regeneration of Silverburn Park near Le-ven, Fife. The allotment site was positioned on an area ad-jacent to the main carpark. A prime location with prime soil having been in pasture land for many years. All 27 plots were filled immediately includ-ing one school plot. However 6 months into the growing season grenades started to be dug up on one area of the site. It then transpired that the park, when it was in private ownership, was com-mandeered by the MOD twice and during WW2 it was used as a training base by the Polish army. Unfortunately the site had to be closed in July to allow detailed investigation to take place and any remedial work carried out. This involved consul-tation with the general public and the plot hold-ers along with the council’s allotment team tak-ing a proactive approach to this unique situation. There were 7 grenades and 63 rounds of ammuni-tion along with loads of old bottles and tin cans !!!! The site is now handed back to the plot holders in good time for them to get ready for the start of the 2019 growing season .

New Glenwood Allotments opened in time for the

growing season. Glenrothes West has just gained a fantastic new community resource. The council’s Community Pro-jects Team have developed a new allotment site with 54 new plots for individual and group use. These plots come supplied with a shed and there are communal facilities on the site which opened on the 1st March 2019. This project is part of the Fife-wide approach to community growing in line with the council’s statu-tory requirements to provide Allotments for its res-idents. These growing projects not only give people the opportunity to grow their own healthy and nutri-cious fruit and veg, they also improve people’s health and wellbeing and enable social inclusion for all — young and old, rich and poor.

Glenwood Allotments under construction

Ancient hand grenade dug up from the site.

SAGS membership If allotments in Scotland are important to you, then join SAGS. There are four categories of membership: Individual Site Federation of Sites Developing Group Information about joining can be found at www.sags.org.uk/JoinSAGS.php


.....growing and managing

Don and Hazel Elder: The Dundee Daffodil Experts

Daffodils are the most beautiful and varied of the spring bulbs. The modern double ones look like roses at first glance while there is an old one called Rip-Van-Winkle which looks like a dandeli-on. They come in a range of colours. Most have yellow or white petals but they can have white, orange, red or pink cups. There are a few with orange petals and red cups. There are new varie-ties of split cups which are flat and are yellow with vivid pink disc like cups. There is a daffodil for everyone.

Don and Hazel have allotments on Dundee’s West Law and daffodils are their consuming passion. Don started collecting daffodils 40 years ago with the intention of getting one of every kind. This ambition was abandoned when he realised that

there were over 30,000 different breeds. They currently have 300 different kinds and Don’s fa-vourite is always the one he is looking at right now! He has a small collection of historical daffo-dils as well as varieties from new breeders. It takes up to 7 years to raise a flower ready to show from a seed so Don and Hazel do not raise their own but enjoy other people’s efforts.

The Elders started showing daffodils 28 years ago and travel all round Scotland in late March and April. They even get as far afield as Gateshead and Solihull. They have also have been running the spring show in Dundee since the council gave it up in 2008. The show is on a smaller scale than it used to be but it gives daffodil enthusiasts somewhere to show their flowers, meet with oth-er growers and chat about their favourite blooms.

Daffodils will grow in almost any conditions but they do like the sun. Do not cut the leaves before they die down, try to give them at least six weeks as this nourishes the bulb.

The “Yellow Fever” has seen Don and Hazel trav-elling to New Zealand ten times to enjoy Daffodil shows and to visit growers over there. Spring in New Zealand is in September so it prolongs the time for enjoying the bulbs. They meet many like minded people from USA and around the world there and are already looking forward to the next World Convention which will be held in Hobart, Tasmania in 2020

The Scottish Borders region has one of the biggest ‘Potato Day’ events in the country. It is probably also the oldest that has still runs every single year. The ‘Potato Day’ concept was first introduced by the Henry Doubleday Research Association 20 years ago.

The aim is to make a really wide variety of seed potato tubers available to amateur gardeners. In addition it is possible to buy really small quantities

of each variety instead of the large bags that tend to dominate at Garden Centres.

Over the years the BOG Potato Day has grown to add a really vibrant Green Fair. There is a huge variety of offerings available from stalls. These include locally (commercially) grown meat and vegetables, local crafts and a number of infor-mation stalls manned by members of a wide varie-ty of ‘green’ organisations. SAGS has been repre-sented there for many years, so it is a good place to go to pick up information about allotments.

Dundee

Scottish Borders

Borders Organic Growers Potato Day


Campaigns and activities

SAGS has just completed ‘Plan to Grow’ the third booklet, in its Galvanising Guides series. It will be launched, at the Gathering on June, by Steve Tol-son—the planning professional who did the work and wrote the guide - and files for download will be available on the web site. The booklets have been produced in an environment where aspiring allotmenteers must expect to wait 10 years on a waiting list before getting access to an allotment in a large town in Scotland. There will be two versions of the guide. The 42 page report ‘Plan to Grow Food’ looks in detail at the planning environment in which Scottish allot-ments currently sit. It suggests routes to improve-ment and also looks at the planning environment in

other UK jurisdictions which make allotments more easily available. It will not be published but will be available on the SAGS website as a pdf file which can be downloaded and printed The second ‘shiny’ version is a summary of the full report, and possibly more accessible to those who are not planning professionals. The booklet is full of lovely pictures of growing spaces and in addition to being made available on the web site will be printed and circulated as a booklet with the same format as the first two Galvanising Guides. Plan to Grow should be of interest to any group looking to start up an allotment site but it also firmly aimed at professional planners. Research by SAGS has determined that many planners suffer from ignorance and misconceptions about the place of allotments and other growing spaces in the hu-man environment. This is possibly because there are so few allotments in Scotland. Many local au-thorities do not themselves own, lease, manage or admit to the existence of any allotment sites in their area. Where allotments do exist in these are-as, they have been self started by groups inde-pendently of the local authority and are managed independently. This situation is very different from the one in England and Wales where even small towns in rural areas are very likely to have one or more allotment sites. SAGS hopes that these booklets will help in the struggle to ameliorate the dire shortage of allot-ments available to lovers of growing in Scotland.

Growing and the Planning System: Galvanising Guide 3

Section 9 of the Community Empowerment Act which was passed in 2015 has not yet been brought into force because the guidance for the Local Au-thorities who have to implement the law has not yet been finalised. However this should happen very soon. The process of agreeing this guidance has been prolonged, involving many meetings be-tween a ‘Tripartate Group’ including the Scottish Government, the Local Authorities and the Scottish Allotments and Gardens Society (SAGS).

A consultation process with the draft Guidance has now been completed and very soon the final Guid-ance document will be published and will be bind-ing on Local Authorities.

One of the duties that is being imposed upon local authorities is a duty to set regulations for the allot-ment sites that they own or lease. The guidance is firm that this should be done in association with stake holders, and makes it clear that the commit-tees of self managed allotment sites are important stakeholders. Nevertheless it appears clear that the ultimate responsibility for the quality of these regulations and their enforcement lies with the lo-cal authority which owns or leases the land.

It has come to the attention of the SAGS committee that the Dundee plot holder featured in our P3 arti-cle on daffodils has recently been barred from his plot by his allotment site association. The SAGS committee members understand that the plot hold-er has no real idea of the reason for this sanction—merely that he has broken rules that have not been specified. Dundee Council own the site but SAGS understands that because the site is self man-aged Dundee Council feels that it cannot intervene in this dispute. SAGS believes this is totally contra-ry to the Guidance which will shortly be published.

The SAGS president has written to the council pointing out what we believe to be its responsibili-ties under the new Act, as ultimate regulating au-thority, to investigate and to ensure fair treatment of all plotholders. We await their response with interest.

The issue has been dealt with very thoroughly in articles by the local Dundee Evening Telegraph. A recent article on the subject can be found at https://www.eveningtelegraph.co.uk/fp/allotment-holder-of-50-years-breaks-their-silence-over-west-law-drama/

Using the Community Empowerment Act Guidance for Local Authorities


Ideas......

Learn to love your Slugs

Many gardening conversations feature the wicked behaviour of slugs—eating delicate seedlings the moment they come through the ground, or munching their way through straw-berries, potato tubers or hostas. These con-versations tend to concentrate more on ways of eradicating slugs than how to preserve them.

However according to the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) only 9 out of the 44 known spe-cies of British slugs are serious horticultural pests. Most of the remainder are innocent eat-ers of decaying vegetation, excellent compost manufacturers and an essential part of the eco system as a food source for other wildlife such as birds, toads and hedgehogs.

One of these beneficial slug species is the Yel-low Cellar Slug. This slug lives mainly on fun-gi, lichens and algae. So they are great for

cleaning the garden and making compost. There is apparently a man in Australia who keeps these slugs in his bathroom to keep the grout in his wall tiles clean.

According to the RHS the Yellow Cellar Slug now appears to be endangered in this country. This slug variety which has been known in the UK for over 130 years is losing the competi-tion with a newcomer—the Green Cellar Slug which arrived in Britain from the Ukraine in the 1970’s.

Both varieties of cellar slug have green-yellow patterned bodies. However the Yellow Cellar Slug is distinguished by a yellow stripe down its tail.

The RHS would like people to go out into their growing spaces—gardens or allotments — to hunt for slugs, identify the type of slugs they find and record all sightings of the Yellow Cel-lar Slug. There is an explanation of how to do this and a link to the RHS slug identification guide at:

https://www.rhs.org.uk/science/help-our-research/slug

There is a form to record and submit your find-ings on line at :

https://www.brc.ac.uk/irecord/rhs-cellar-slugs

Slugs, including the Cellar Slugs, are nocturnal so to do this you will need a torch and be pre-pared to wander round taking pictures in the dark.

Anyone who grows fruit—and this includes peas and beans as well as soft fruit and tree fruit— is totally dependent on pollination to produce the crop. The gardener with a paint brush is definitely the least efficient type of pollinator and in practice this means that we depend on insects for a large part of our food —bees, wasps, butterflies ….. Unfortunately modern farming methods, and the ‘horticultural’ arrangements around many modern housing developments are extremely unfriendly to these insects. Scottish National Heritage have de-veloped a strategy to encourage Scotland’s gar-deners to grow in a way that helps pollinators. They give advice on suitable plants to grow and how to manage the gardening environment. You can read all about it at https://www.nature.scot/scotlands-biodiversity/helping-scotlands-pollinators

Grow for Pollinators


About SAGS

About SAGS SAGS is a voluntary organisation funded by the subscriptions of its members. We offer a forum through which plot holders can work together to make sure that allotment sites will flourish in Scotland in the next millennium. If you care about allotment pro-vision in Scotland then join SAGS. In particular we plan to:

Work together to lobby Mem-bers of the Scottish Parlia-ment for improved and in-creased allotment provision in Scotland.

Maintain contact with the Parliament so that we can represent gardeners’ inter-ests during the consultative stages of legislation which may affect Sites.

SAGS provides an opportunity to:

Share experiences to resist the takeover of Allotment Sites when these are threat-ened by building or other developments.

Find examples from other sites on the best terms of let or lease when these are be-ing negotiated for a Site

Act as a forum for the ex-change of information on Site Management experience giv-ing advice on good practice in forming and preparing a suitable Constitution and for-mulating a missive-of-let

Contact SAGS on: [email protected] [email protected] The newsletter comes out twice a year in Spring and Au-tumn. We really value the con-tributions of our members. Any items or correspondence for the next newsletter should be sent as an email to: [email protected] To keep up to date with SAGS activities visit the web site at www.sags.org.uk

Scottish Allotment Gathering 2019

KEEP THE DAY FREE

The Gathering this year will be held on Saturday June 15th and we can promise you an interesting, fun day out at the Vic-toria Halls in Dunblane .

So, who wants an allotment? Well, it seems that everyone does and there just aren’t enough to go around! We’ll hear how Fife is managing to find lots of places

to make into allotment sites. How plan-ners and developers can help Local Au-thorities meet their obligations to provide sites, and how SAGS member, Mark did it his way - with a little help from lots of his friends.

We will also find out how to be pollinator friendly & what happens when things go bang on the plots, in a controlled kind of way. As usual, there will be some ‘Stories from the Sites” and a variety of stalls and exhibits. So you may be tempt-ed to take some things home with you as well as memories of a good day out with interesting, friendly fellow garden enthu-siasts.

Look forward to seeing you there !! More details will be available on the web site.

SAGS has been a member of the Garden for Life Forum since its beginnings nearly 20 years ago. The Forum members are drawn from 30 environmental organisa-tions, such as Plantlife, Butterfly Conservation, and the RSPB, and others who have an interest in sustainable gardening. It is a powerful voice for wildlife gar-dening in Scotland.

Forum members come together each year in the Living Garden at the popular gardening show “Gardening Scotland” at Ingliston, Edinburgh with individual stalls, drop-in workshops and Q and A sessions. This year’s show is from Friday 31 May – Sunday 3 June. As always, SAGS has a stand and is looking for volunteer helpers. The great thing for a volunteer helper is that you get a free ticket to the whole show. It is also a wonderful place to bring children (free with accom-panying adult), who can roam safely round the displays when you are manning the stand.

If you would like to help on the SAGS stand for a few hours on one of the days please get in touch with the committee at [email protected]. We have 3 free tickets for each of the days.

Volunteers needed at Gardening Scotland

STAY ON FOR THE EGM This year the Gathering will be fol-lowed by a very important EGM. SAGS is currently a voluntary unin-corporated organisation. The com-mittee believes that it will be bet-ter able to represent its members if it changes its structure to become a SCIO. This was explained in the pre-vious newsletter and there has been a consultation on the Web Site since January. We need a new constitution which must be approved by our mem-bers. Please stick around for the EGM to take part in this important process.

mailto:[email protected]

scottish allotments newsletter · start of the 2019 growing season . new glenwood allotments opened...

Documents