Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
The plot thickens –
Allotments are meant to be genteel retreats for the greenfingered. But, as Alex Claridge finds out, there is an extraordinary row brewing at one of the city’s biggest sites
Think allotments and your mind conjures up images of The Good Life starring Richard Briers and Felicity Kendal, middle-aged suburbanites ankle-deep in mud hunched over vegetable patches or tending to their tomatoes in a greenhouse.
For these amateur horticulturists the allotment ought to be a world away from the everyday strains of life, where the greatest stress is whether those marrows will grow properly. But for plot holders at a site in Canterbury, this couldn’t be further from the truth.
The Victoria Park allotments off the Rheims Way are at the centre of an extraordinary row, a cauldron of claim and counterclaim, of allegations of “totalitarianism”, cries of racism, solicitors’ letters and the publication of “defamatory” leaflets, all of which has put the ruling committee on a collision course with its members.
And then there is Canterbury City Council, which owns the site and which originally wanted to keep its distance, but it will examine the situation.
At the centre of the dispute is allotment holder Kathleen Parkin, a well-spoken Seychellesborn retired teacher who lives just across the dual carriageway in Mead Way and has been tending a plot for seven years.
The committee which runs the site has decided the 64-year-old is a nuisance and wants rid of her.
In a letter to Mrs Parkin in January it told her it would be terminating her lease and evicting her.
Among the allegations are that she has made “racially divisive comments” to other plot-holders, taken photos of other plots, failed to smile or respond to greetings from other members and even sped round the site in her car.
Mel Glazer, of The St Dunstan’s Horticultural Society (SDHS), which manages the site, wrote to Mrs Parkin in January to tell her that her membership of the society had been withdrawn and that she would have to vacate her plot.
The letter read: “Unneighbourliness has led to a great deal of unhappiness and substantial stress for committee members and other allotment holders.
“This unpleasantness has included the core hard-working committee members, which you unkindly and unjustifiably named in one of your defamatory leaflets.
“It has been decided that for everyone’s emotional and physical wellbeing...your tenancy has been terminated with immediate effect.”
Mrs Parkin admits she passed leaflets to other plot holders, but insists they merely questioned the activities of other members she suspected might be breaching allotment rules.