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Rochford Life: David, for how long has the Allotment Association been in existence?
David: Well, we’re coming to the end of our third year. We started in 2007. We became a committee under the guidance of the National Allotments Association, and none of us really knew what we were doing. The committee were voted in.... well somebody pushed my hand in the air and everybody else voted and it went down through the ranks from there!
RL: How many allotments do you actually have here?
David: At the moment we’ve got 110, that’s full and half allotments. We have roughly eighty members per year; they may well have two halves or one and a half. There are also allotment holders who aren’t members. On the other hand, we also have members who don’t have allotments, and they are simply members to gain the benefits of the trading hut with the cheaper prices on seeds etc. that members get. Our full name is the Rochford Allotments and Leisure Gardeners Association. Everyone on the site is given the choice of joining. They get the benefit of cheap machines – mowers, strimmers, rotovators - as well as half-price seeds, and all the sundries in the trading hut are cheap
RL: Perhaps an impression in many is that if you are a member of an Allotment Association you are a very clever and skilled gardener. Is that true?
David: No, that is not the truth, but we’re probably very enthusiastic! If you take on an allotment and think it’s like a television programme and you can fiddle about for five minutes a week, then the allotment will run away with you. You’ll never get it under control and you then become a burden to allotments around you because of your seeding weeds.
RL: Having had a brief look around, you have tremendously varied allotments, from those who are really wonderful to those who excel in growing weeds. Enthusiasm therefore varies across the board.
David: Yes, it does. You might take on an allotment and realise you can’t do it, and so put blinkers on and hope it will go away. Sometimes there are people who suffer changes in life; all sorts of things come along, children arrive, work pressures, then you have illnesses, back troubles and so on, which stop good allotment management.
RL: Your message seems to be that once you become and allotment holder, you really need to be working steadily at it?
David: You do. You need to treat it as a project really, to get it under control in the first place, because very rarely do you take over an allotment fully dug for you and in good condition. It’s normally because somebody can’t manage it and they’ve let it get out of control and then you, as a new allotment holder, come along and have to take it over like that.
RL: What do you, as an Allotment Association, do over the space of a year?
David: In late Spring we have our first Plant Sale and invite members of the public in the local neighbourhood to come in and buy plants or maybe produce at that time, such as rhubarb, or anything that’s available at that time of year. They can be excesses of what members have grown, or they can be purposefully grown. We then have an early Summer Produce Sale where more produce is being grown. We also have open days, one of which also this year coincided with our first Annual Show, which was last August 14th which went down very well with our landlords, the Parish Council, and the public that came in. The allotment holders were the only ones that were allowed to show their produce but everyone was really enthusiastic. We’re trying to get up a Spring Show as well, because the judge who judged our Summer Show, will judge our Spring Show, which we’ll hold in the Parish Rooms, and he’ll also talk after the show about what to look for in the show. We also have a Quiz Night twice a year which we hold in the W.I. Hall (there is one this evening actually).
RL: What have you done since you set up as an Allotment Association?
David: The first thing we did was to get some free road filling to fill in the potholes through the site!
RL: Do you get help from the Parish Council to help with this?
David: We do get some funding. We now have a service agreement because they used to cut all the grass, but we now do that and we get funding from them to do it. We’ve managed to get a small tractor-grass-cutter with funding from the Parish Council because although we said we’d cut the grass, domestic strimmers and mowers aren’t good enough and big enough to do the whole site; it’s quite a big site. So, the first thing we were able to do was the roadways. At the same time the Parish Council had been given a grant to do up an old trading hut but that was filled up with asbestos and so they had to sit on this grant. So, when we became an association we also became aware that there was money to be had, and the trading hut had to be taken down while we were looking for new huts. We looked at Portacabins and were given a good deal so that we were able to get three cabins and a Septic tank so we could have toilets. And then we put decking outside.
RL: So, everything is going smoothly now.
David: Not quite. It been suggested by someone outside that we turn the car park into further allotments, which isn’t going down very well with everyone here. It means nowhere to park and it also means we have nowhere to hold our shows. When we had our show we brought two marquees, 30 feet by 10 feet to house our produce in on the car park area. There is the field next door but it’s owned by the farmer and is being considered for building.
RL: Is there a waiting list for allotments?
David: Oh yes, there is a waiting list for those in the parish, and a list for those out of the parish, probably a couple of dozen altogether. Actually now is a key time for this because if people hadn’t paid up by yesterday, or if people want to give up their allotments, we may have some spare.
RL: So would you like to see the site expanded? Talking about that field there, would you like there to be more allotments.
David: Yes, there is the demand. Another plan we have is to bring a better water supply on to the site. There are actually twenty standpipes but such a small diameter supply that if two people have taps on, there is nothing for anyone else. We’d like to increase the number to fifty five but we’re only supplied by a 25mm pipe which really needs to be upped to at least 50mm but that becomes commercial then, which makes it a bit involved. The Parish Council who are our landlords have the remit to supply us with water and secure fencing, and we look after the rest of the site ourselves, as an Association.
RL: And how, to finish, do you feel about this Allotment Association and this site?
David: Well, a couple of years ago I put it, we are going to be one of the jewels in Rochford’s crown. The allotment site is a growing community in Rochford.
RL: Well, thanks David, that is an excellent sound bite to finish with. May it be so!
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David: Well, we’re coming to the end of our third year. We started in 2007. We became a committee under the guidance of the National Allotments Association, and none of us really knew what we were doing. The committee were voted in.... well somebody pushed my hand in the air and everybody else voted and it went down through the ranks from there!
RL: How many allotments do you actually have here?
David: At the moment we’ve got 110, that’s full and half allotments. We have roughly eighty members per year; they may well have two halves or one and a half. There are also allotment holders who aren’t members. On the other hand, we also have members who don’t have allotments, and they are simply members to gain the benefits of the trading hut with the cheaper prices on seeds etc. that members get. Our full name is the Rochford Allotments and Leisure Gardeners Association. Everyone on the site is given the choice of joining. They get the benefit of cheap machines – mowers, strimmers, rotovators -
RL: Perhaps an impression in many is that if you are a member of an Allotment Association you are a very clever and skilled gardener. Is that true?
David: No, that is not the truth, but we’re probably very enthusiastic! If you take on an allotment and think it’s like a television programme and you can fiddle about for five minutes a week, then the allotment will run away with you. You’ll never get it under control and you then become a burden to allotments around you because of your seeding weeds.
RL: Having had a brief look around, you have tremendously varied allotments, from those who are really wonderful to those who excel in growing weeds. Enthusiasm therefore varies across the board.
David: Yes, it does. You might take on an allotment and realise you can’t do it, and so put blinkers on and hope it will go away. Sometimes there are people who suffer changes in life; all sorts of things come along, children arrive, work pressures, then you have illnesses, back troubles and so on, which stop good allotment management.
RL: Your message seems to be that once you become and allotment holder, you really need to be working steadily at it?
David: You do. You need to treat it as a project really, to get it under control in the first place, because very rarely do you take over an allotment fully dug for you and in good condition. It’s normally because somebody can’t manage it and they’ve let it get out of control and then you, as a new allotment holder, come along and have to take it over like that.
RL: What do you, as an Allotment Association, do over the space of a year?
David: In late Spring we have our first Plant Sale and invite members of the public in the local neighbourhood to come in and buy plants or maybe produce at that time, such as rhubarb, or anything that’s available at that time of year. They can be excesses of what members have grown, or they can be purposefully grown. We then have an early Summer Produce Sale where more produce is being grown. We also have open days, one of which also this year coincided with our first Annual Show, which was last August 14th which went down very well with our landlords, the Parish Council, and the public that came in. The allotment holders were the only ones that were allowed to show their produce but everyone was really enthusiastic. We’re trying to get up a Spring Show as well, because the judge who judged our Summer Show, will judge our Spring Show, which we’ll hold in the Parish Rooms, and he’ll also talk after the show about what to look for in the show. We also have a Quiz Night twice a year which we hold in the W.I. Hall (there is one this evening actually).
RL: What have you done since you set up as an Allotment Association?
David: The first thing we did was to get some free road filling to fill in the potholes through the site!
RL: Do you get help from the Parish Council to help with this?
David: We do get some funding. We now have a service agreement because they used to cut all the grass, but we now do that and we get funding from them to do it. We’ve managed to get a small tractor-
RL: So, everything is going smoothly now.
David: Not quite. It been suggested by someone outside that we turn the car park into further allotments, which isn’t going down very well with everyone here. It means nowhere to park and it also means we have nowhere to hold our shows. When we had our show we brought two marquees, 30 feet by 10 feet to house our produce in on the car park area. There is the field next door but it’s owned by the farmer and is being considered for building.
RL: Is there a waiting list for allotments?
David: Oh yes, there is a waiting list for those in the parish, and a list for those out of the parish, probably a couple of dozen altogether. Actually now is a key time for this because if people hadn’t paid up by yesterday, or if people want to give up their allotments, we may have some spare.
RL: So would you like to see the site expanded? Talking about that field there, would you like there to be more allotments.
David: Yes, there is the demand. Another plan we have is to bring a better water supply on to the site. There are actually twenty standpipes but such a small diameter supply that if two people have taps on, there is nothing for anyone else. We’d like to increase the number to fifty five but we’re only supplied by a 25mm pipe which really needs to be upped to at least 50mm but that becomes commercial then, which makes it a bit involved. The Parish Council who are our landlords have the remit to supply us with water and secure fencing, and we look after the rest of the site ourselves, as an Association.
RL: And how, to finish, do you feel about this Allotment Association and this site?
David: Well, a couple of years ago I put it, we are going to be one of the jewels in Rochford’s crown. The allotment site is a growing community in Rochford.
RL: Well, thanks David, that is an excellent sound bite to finish with. May it be so!
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From right to left: David Patmore, Paul Nice, John English, Roger Smith - the men at the heart of the Association
Past Events: Interview with David Patmore (October 16th 2010)
Coffee on the Allotments
David is chairman of the Allotment Association. I met with he and his wife, Lynne, and a bunch of their fellow gardening enthusiasts, in what appeared to be their club-house where I was plied with coffee from the hands of the youngest member there, Joe, who does their barbecues and is a trainee chef! Throughout our time together there was a constant hubbub of background chatter and banter. When you get to the end of this interview you’ll see David’s comment about it being a community. I concluded it was clearly that already, not a mere group of individual gardeners! Happy reading!
Rochford Allotment Association
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