The secret to my perfect allotment? A gardener…
After a shock letter exposed her neglect, Jane Corry had no choice but to call in the experts
‘Dear Mrs Corry, It has come to our attention that your allotment is in dire need of tender care…” I stared at the letter from the council. As evidence, there was a photograph below showing a wilderness that would put Sleeping Beauty’s forest to shame.
“I told you,” said my husband smugly. “You haven’t got time for an allotment.”
So how had I ended up in this mess? Like many others, I have an inexplicable primal urge to get back to the land. I’ll never make it to Chelsea Flower Show exhibition standard, but it still inspires a secret yearning to be the kind of person who can produce, with a flourish, a dish of green beans and Brussels sprouts that I have “grown myself ”.
In another life, I owned five acres, including a vegetable plot, which (once more) I was never on top of because of children and work. You’d think I would have learnt my lesson. Yet when my second husband and I moved to the sea, and fell in love with an airy Regency villa, my only reservation was that it had a smallish garden. So I put my name down for an allotment. I didn’t hold my breath.
Eight years, four novels and one grandchild later, a letter arrived informing me that I’d been “successful” – I was the proud tenant of a strip of land for less than £50 a year (including running water). I couldn’t wait to cycle down.
Then I saw it: unlike its neighbours, which sported neatly spaced leeks, my allotment was mainly brambles. Still, I thought excitedly, I could make blackberry jam in the summer. As for the other overgrown bits on either side, I’d simply dig up the weeds.
But my writer’s shoulder didn’t take kindly to the oomph required. As for the long grass, a neighbour lent me a strimmer but I could barely lift it. Then it began to rain. And rain. No one in their right mind could dig in this. Could they? That’s when the
letter arrived. “Don’t worry,” chirped one of my new (pink-haired) allotment friends, who claimed to be as green as me. “I received one, too.”
But I did worry. I’m a good girl. My school reports always said I was “conscientious” – I wasn’t the kind of person who gets told off for not doing a good enough job.
And then it came to me: I’d get a gardener to do it instead! I’d pay someone to lick it into shape and – so that it wasn’t entirely cheating – I’d dig alongside them, learn a bit on the way.
Through word of mouth, I found a
He worked like a Trojan through a Biblical deluge. My brambles are no more
wonderful man. It cost me nearly five years’ worth of my allotment rent but it was worth it. By the end of the summer my bike basket was filled with potatoes and courgettes, and I began to enjoy my allotment instead of just feel perpetually guilty about it.
But then I turned my back for a few weeks. The weeks grew into months. More rain. A second grandchild to look after. I tried pre-prepping the mud but almost sank in. Then the sun came out and it was suddenly like digging concrete. Uh oh. Every time the post arrived, I feared another letter. Something had to be done. Fast.
My previous gardener was busy. So last week, I picked up another – this time off the street when I was walking past his van, advertising his wares. “Sure,” said the slim, wiry, long-haired driver with muscle-rippling, tattooed arms. “I’ll come and look at it.”
He not only looked at it, he worked like a Trojan through a Biblical deluge that made Noah’s experience look like a dribble of rain. My brambles are no more.
I can now plant the broad beans which I’ve been growing in a pot by the back door. I’ve bought a jolly little scarecrow to scare off the seagulls. And next weekend, I’m going to take up residence with my laptop in the little allotment shed (as soon as I’ve cleared the cobwebs and sorted through the pre-forties tools). It’s hardly costeffective, given the price of veg in the shops, but in order not to be named and shamed again I’m keeping my new gardener on for “regular maintenance”. And no. You can’t have his number….
Jane Corry’s new novel, I Looked Away
(about a granny whose past catches up with her) is published by Penguin on June 27