Allotments grow from rubble
war. Driven by hunger, a resourceful group of gardeners formed. Calling themselves the Bethnal Green Bombed Sites Producers’ Association, they turned their green fingers to converting concrete tombs. Using elbow grease, imagination and pierced dustbin lids to sift the earth for shrapnel and glass, over 300 men, women and children transformed the darkest of death traps into verdant green allotments.
Where once people had been buried and crushed under tonnes of high explosive, new life blossomed. Led by local councillor Sir Wyndham Deedes, who had taken up Churchill’s rallying call ‘Put your garden on war service,’ the Dig for Victory campaign took the East End by storm.
They had to dig deep, literally, sometimes digging as deep as 6ft (1.8m) to reach soil not made toxic by bombs. By the summer of 1943, allotment fever had gripped the East End. Residents who had dared to stay created vegetable plots from old baths, canes and packing boxes. Gardens now bloomed in the most curious of locations; marrows grew on top of Anderson shelters, and tomatoes on factory window ledges. Where old houses had been blasted away, gardens, chicken coops and rabbit hutches had been constructed from the scrap – the greenery incongruous among the rubble and fire-scorched buildings.
‘Thousands of shirkers might feel ashamed of themselves if they could see what people are doing in Bethnal Green. This experiment shows that with hard work and relatively little expense of money, even Bethnal Greeners can make their contribution to food production,’ declared a letter to The Times, somewhat condescendingly.
Even kids got involved. Russia Lane in Bethnal Green contained some of the worse slum housing in the borough. The notorious soot-stained tenements housed the very poorest folk. Huge