UN-CULTIVATED ALLOTMENT PLOTS, SHAME AND NAME!

ALLOTMENT SITES WITH LONG WAITING LISTS AND OVERGROWN PLOTS

Our allotment site has a few plots that are not well-cultivated. Some have been vacant for a time.

One plot next to mine is a real disgrace.  The tenant is the local Adult Education College, where courses are held under the heading 'GARDENING AND HORTICULTURE'.

The thug grasses next to my plot

Every year this plot is left to grow a waist high covering of thug grasses, interspersed with thistles.  Every year the seeds from this plot blow over to my plot and the two other plots which are its neighbours, as well as further afield.

In the prospectus for 2013/2014 there are 19 Gardening and Horticulture courses listed at the college.  In the past a group of students have arrived in summer, for three or four morning sessions, presumably as an aspect of one of these courses but they do very little.  This spring and summer I have not seen anybody.

We are luck to have a new  keen committee, and under 'self-management' our committee are convinced of the necessity of getting tenants on all the overgrown plots and to give notices to quit if the allotment holders do not or cannot cultivate their little piece of south London.

Unfortunately the college, up to now, has not acted on notices of 'non-cultivation' that has been sent to it.

I should be so pleased if they do decide to quit, so that somebody can take on the plot and reap the rewards of growing vegetables and fruit.  It would make my life easier too!