I need to create a sense of abundance in my allotment

The plot should be almost like a Rousseau jungle that a small child might move through in wonder

By Allan Jenkins
The Guardian
May 30, 2021

Excerpt:

I see a plant I admire and I stalk it. I start by noting, say, a perfect single orange calendula or a delicate poppy for seed saving. Then I feel guilt at the Darwinist genetic selection.

Every year I transplant (most of) our seed collection to the allotment’s shed, though, last year mice decimated my carefully curated beans, snacked on the tear peas and finished off the amaranth, leaving only shredded packets like mouse nesting material.

Yet somehow there are more this season. I daren’t tell you how many packets and bags of nasturtiums I am holding, but it’s probably into double figures. And, of course, they are already self-sown everywhere. It is near the same with many styles of calendula. It seems I can’t get enough.

‘It’s a benign addiction, but an addiction, nonetheless,’ says my minimalist architect wife. And it is not as though I don’t know the plot is barely 20 square metres. But somehow in my head I am collecting, buying and sowing for the whole site.

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