This Allotment Stories of Growing, Eating and Nurturing

This Allotment brings together thirteen brilliant contemporary writers in a glorious celebration of these entirely unique spaces: plots that mean so much more than the soil upon which they sit. An allotment. A health-giving, heart-filling miniature kingdom of carrots, courgettes and callaloo. A microcosm for our societies at large as people claim their ‘patch’ and guard it protectively, but also of welcoming arms, gifted gluts and new recipes from overseas. They are places of blowsy dahlias, cricket on the radio and cups of tea in tumbledown sheds; they are buzzing bees and the wisdom of weeds and seeds; they are resilience, resistance and freedom with a radical history and future. All life is here is this collection of vibrant original pieces on growing, eating and nurturing.

CONTRIBUTORS:
Jenny Chamarette
Rob Cowen
Marchelle Farrell
Olia Hercules
David Keenan & Heather Leigh
Kirsteen McNish
JC Niala
Graeme Rigby
Rebecca Schiller
Sui Searle
Sara Venn
Alice Vincent

Sarah Rigby is an editor and book coach, and Publishing Director at the vibrant independent Elliott & Thompson. Sarah has worked with some of the country’ s best-loved and award-winning writers of nature and place, including Rob Cowen (Common Ground); Nancy Campbell (Fifty Words for Snow); James Aldred (Goshawk Summer); Rebecca Schiller (Earthed) and Alice Roberts (Tamed). Originally from Yorkshire, she now lives in London with her family where she has an allotment and volunteers for the food-growing workers’ co-op, Organic Lea. She is very proud of her yellow courgettes this year.

CONTENTS A Beginning - Sarah Rigby 1 Fail, Repeat, Begin Again - Kirsteen McNish 7 Soil and Song - Olia Hercules 29 Of Circular Time and Vegetables - David Keenan and Heather Leigh 43 Uncertain Ground - Marchelle Farrell 59 Land Is the Work of Many Hands - Jenny Chamarette 75 Allotments Are Anomalies - Rebecca Schiller 101 Old Boys and Hidden Women - JC Niala 121 Space to Grow: Women and Allotments - Alice Vincent 133 Cultivating Community - Sui Searle 139 Peaceable Kingdoms - Graeme Rigby 155 From Sweet Peas to Politics - Sara Venn 171 This Allotment - Rob Cowen 189 About the Contributors 195 About the Editor 200