Values

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Being at one with yourself and with nature is one of the delights of gardening. Last weekend felt so glorious walking in the Derbyshire Peaks, up hills and down dales, warming my winter bones in the sun, while working up a healthy appetite by struggling up those steep inclines. It was all so worthwhile. There were daffodils wanting to flower, wild hedgerows welcoming bees on their delicate flowers and primroses about to bud.

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We ended up near Haversage eating a pub lunch outdoors, sipping slowly locally brewed beer. This was our noble contribution to reducing food miles; it was such a burden! The price of the meal was affordable. But what price should you pay for the right to ramble; the spring in our step made even the weariness of winter seem worthwhile.

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One of the delights of Spring is wandering up to the allotment meeting friends you have not seen for months, looking at your plot, seeing what has survived, what is beginning to grow, finding the flowers that are emerging or the damage done to the sheds.

A couple of weeks ago I happened across an old friend with whom our families had been to Woodcraft camp together twenty years ago. We recalled the bleak Coombe valley being lashed by storms, yet we still enjoyed meeting one another.

This is echoed in a recent article in the BHOGG newsletter www.bhogg.org . It sensitively observed that allotments provide a place where communities can form from a wide range of ages and backgrounds, leading to friendships and support networks, which spread much wider than the allotment site.

The article went to recall that the recent turmoil in the allotment world over rents made the author think that we shouldn’t take the privilege of having an allotment or their relative cheapness for granted. We also need to let the wider public and powers that be know just how much allotments contribute positively to the quality of life for the whole city.

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The focus has been on costs, but we run the risk of knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing. What price is there for good health, your own freedom and land to cultivate, how do you value the sanity that open space provides or the taste of your own fresh food where you forgive the blemishes to enjoy the produce of your own honest labour?

The Sussex Downs with their wide windswept panoramas are so very different to the Derbyshire Peak and yet they are equally beautiful.

What price would you pay to hike on the downs, what price would you pay to swim in the sea, what price would you pay to promenade along the sea shore? All of these are part of our heritage. What price would you pay for good health or for prescriptions if market forces ruled?

The long term challenge surely is to make allotments, like rambling, available to all. Are we still living in a different decade, where few people appreciated allotments or in the brave new world where everything has its price and nothing has a value for a community?

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