Our 117 plot site was looking very under-occupied and overgrown in December 2002 when our newly-appointed council allotments officer arranged a meeting with all tenants and helped us to form an association. We cleared plots head-high in brambles and all kinds of other nasty weeds then advertised our site with posters put up locally.

We obtained council grants to renovate our ancient railway carriage for use as a shop and to make car parks. The shop has made a great focus for the site, supplying local people with spare produce as well as well as selling gardening materials.

Our overworked treasurer then obtained a grant from ARI to make a wetland wildlife area in an unused corner of the site. This was planted up with a large variety of native trees and herbaceous plants and looked wonderfully colourful last summer. Yet another grant, this time from Peoples? Places, enabled us to convert 2 plots into a paved area with raised beds for disabled gardeners, a first for York allotments. Most of the construction was done by the Community Payback Teams of North Yorkshire Probation Service, who have plots on site. We now have a transformed site with a waiting list for new tenants, something we would never have believed possible back then!

Daphne Brinklow

First published: ARI Newsletter Winter 2006