Peter Ross at large: Losing the plot means farewell to more than just an allotment

Published on Saturday 20 June 2009 19:42

MARGARET Kerr is losing the plot. To be precise, she is losing a 64 by 36ft patch of good earth where she grows peas, parsnips, potatoes, cabbages and cauliflowers. I hope she won't mind me saying she has lovely brassicas.

Kerr, 50, is the secretary of an allotment in the Oatlands area of Glasgow, near the Gorbals. Once a deep-rooted community, Oatlands is now a husk, its red sandstone tenements demolished to make way for the M74 extension and new housing. The streets are gone, but their signs remain, pointing into thin air like a child seeing a ghost. The allotment is a secret oasis amid the mud and din, yet its days are numbered. Developers plan to build on the site, and though a new allotment will be created, it will have fewer plots, meaning Kerr and others will be turfed out.

For months, the allotment has suffered vandalism. Sheds have been burned, tools stolen, greenhouses smashed. Yet Kerr loves the place and will be sad to leave. "Five years ago I was diagnosed with epilepsy," she says. "But since I've had the allotment I haven't had any seizures. It's very therapeutic. You potter around and forget everyday problems."

Finding a new plot will not be easy. Allotments are in great demand. There are 26 sites in Glasgow, all full, with more than 600 people on waiting lists. Scotland-wide, there are around 6,500 plots and approximately 4,000 people on waiting lists. You can wait so long that you are in the ground yourself before a plot comes free. Kerr has been told it could take 33 years, by which time she is unlikely to be in any condition to howk tatties from the surly earth.

The seeds of allotments' popularity are various: a need to save cash; a realisation that we should eat less junk. Then there is anxiety about the future of the planet, a desire to cling closer as individuals to what we, as a species, are killing. Recent high-profile endorsements have also boosted allotments. Michelle Obama has had part of the White House lawn dug up to create an organic garden, and the Queen has followed suit. And when, last weekend, a 73- year-old allotmenteer from Bolton won 25 million on the lottery, he announced delightedly that he could now afford professional help for his troublesome carrots.

"He should have come to me," says David Wilson, 77, who has a plot in Julian Avenue Allotments in Kelvinside. "I've had good results with carrots." He gestures with pride towards the current crop. The secret is to grow marigolds among your seedlings. The scent puts off the dreaded carrot fly.

Wilson is full of tips like that. "Davey has an idea," says his pal Harry Flanagan, 78, "that if you soak peas in paraffin the mice'll no' go near them."

"Have you seen my peas?" Wilson asks.

"Naebody ever sees mine," says Flanagan. "I've got a prostate problem."

Wilson and Flanagan are living proof that where there are plots there are characters. Allotments are also rich in metaphor. First of all, they are about roots, neighbourliness, passing the time of day, passing on useful knowledge – such as how to use Irn-Bru cans as bird-scarers – to a younger generation. This is why allotments are of particular importance in places like Oatlands where the community has been uprooted and dispersed.

Secondly, allotments are about renewal. In Oatlands I heard about an old man who lost his wife last spring and now tends his plots most days, staying busy and in good company, not buried alive in grief. I think, too, about a relation of mine, now dead, who drove petrol tankers until one day, in a terrible road accident, he killed someone. Shattered, he never drove or worked again. What he did, though, was get an allotment. He would sit there in his shed with his carry-out and an air-rifle to scare off the rabbits. Or he would wander out into the August sunshine to pick the jaggy rows of brambles. It was his way of being happy, I suppose; a way of keeping hands and head occupied. Sweet fruit not sour memories.

In Kennyhill allotments, in the Riddrie area of Glasgow's East End, there is a man called Gerhart Lory. He has had a plot there since 1953 and says, simply: "It's my life." His daughter drops him off in the morning and picks him up at teatime and he works away all day. Originally from the Saxony area of Germany, he arrived in the UK as a prisoner of war. He laughs: "The Americans sold me to Britain. Twenty-five dollars is all that I'm worth." He was in London first, repairing war damage, then redeployed to Glasgow where, in 1949, he was demobbed. Returning to a Germany occupied by Russia did not appeal, and when he met a local girl he decided to stay.

At first, in the allotment, he was regarded with animosity by some plot-holders, but then a remarkable thing happened: he won the top prize for best plot. Then he did it again the following year. Hostility gave way to respect for his skills, other plot-holders started coming to him for advice, and now he is a loved member of the community. At 85, his eyes are bad, his hearing is bad, and he has trouble with his feet, so lately he has been thinking about hanging up his hoe. But he has been talked out of it by younger plot-holders unwilling to see him go.

"Oh, he'll never give it up," says his friend Michael Bateman. "I tell him when I come in one morning and find him lying dead, I'll roll him over and use him as fertiliser."

The demographics of allotment use are changing fast as eco-aware young people take an interest. But what's fascinating is that allotments do away with demographics and the whole idea of distinctions along the lines of age, gender, class. There's a blurring of identity as everyone mucks in.

Maggie Pert, a slim woman in her sixties, puts it well when asked what her plot at High Carntyne means to her: "It's like being a child again. You can get filthy mucky dirty and no one cares. It's a playground. You can create your own wee world."