I would like to see a garden or an allotment compulsory, so if it’s a flat, it comes with an allotment, and if it’s a house, it has to have a garden.
The State will compell you to have a veg patch?
I would like to see a garden or an allotment compulsory, so if it’s a flat, it comes with an allotment, and if it’s a house, it has to have a garden.
The State will compell you to have a veg patch?
Not that new build actually coming with more than a pocket handkerchief’s worth of space around each house would be such a bad thing, were it not for the other constraints on land availability.
The State will then enslave you to be productive on your statutory site. You will be forced to market the produce, and compete with all your neighbours. Nobody will want the produce, of course, as they all have to grow heir own. You will not be recompensed for your toil but there will be a raft of paid nosy-Parkers to enforce the proper management of your plot.
Fines for millimetric non-compliance will be draconian…you may even have your plot confiscated.
Step 1. You must have garden.
Step 2. You must have plants, not lawn.
Step 3. Plants must be edible, no flowers. Produce measured/weighed by MiniAg.
Step 4. You must ‘garden’ a set number of hours a day.
Step 5. Word ‘Gardening’ changed by MiniTruth to ‘Farming’.
Step 6. Fences removed for efficiency.
Step 7. Word ‘Citizen’ changed by MiniTruth to ‘Serf’.
Green dream complete. Gaia is happy. All are now happy. Welcome to 1387.
Nick,
Apologies. Posted simultaneously.
Now after a coffee I see thing differently….Your plot will be confiscated and reallocated to more productive members of society who will take on more and more plots and will become FARMERS. It’s a brilliant scheme, why hasn’t it been thought of before.
@S-R HaHaHa!!!
I suppose its time to roll out one of the reliable oldies…..
Revolutionary: “Comrades, when the revolution comes you’ll all drive a Rolls Royce.”
Voice from back: “But I don’t want to drive a Rolls Royce.”
Revolutionary: “Comrades, when the revolution comes you’ll do as you’re told and if we say you’ll drive a Rolls Royce…”
No, the State will not, whatever this bargain- basement Percy Thrower demands…
Monty Don is a complete tosser. If he talked to the trees even they wouldn’t take any notice.
Stage one of the plan is to force us to grow our own food.
Stage two of the plan is to force us to send it to a central collective for its redistribution.
Stage three of the plan is to not send any of it back to us to eat.
Stage four of the plan is to have the Guardian send journalists to our towns and villages so that they can file glowing reports as to how well the plan is working, and not mention that millions of us are starving to death.
It will work beautifully! Ask the Ukrainians!
I have red fingers and no interest in gardening at all. I grow cats in my front garden, they build nests and come from around the neighbourhood.
He makes a whole load of assumptions in that article, the first being that people should somehow be expected to be interested in plants and gardening. His worrybucketing about not enough young people being involved is the usual ‘young people of today’ drivel and is immediately undermined by his own recognition that many people discover an interest in their thirties. What’s the problem then ?
I don’t know where he thinks the land for more allotments is going to come from or who is going to finance it, councils aren’t keen on the ones they’ve already got.
This is just another example of greenish monomaniacs deciding that everyone should share their concerns and pisses off many of us who are actually keen on gardening just as much as it does everyone else
And look what happens to all those lovely trees; they get turned into wood pulp and Monty Don gets to dribble all over them in print.
Dear Comrades,
All garden plots will be collectivised forthwith. Those not agreeing (which I estimate to be about 20 million in number) will be reduced to starvation.
Yours affectionately, Joe Stalin.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:
I grew some tomatoes. I lavished love and care on them. It took a lot – comparitively – of time and effort if little financial investment. I was looking forward to authentic-tasting tomatoes that weren’t the bland indentikit ones you buy in waitrose. In the end they were squashy and a bit shit.
I decided that people who grew tomatoes for a living should grow tomatoes, I would do what I do, and take some of the money I get paid and pay it to them in return for some of their tomatoes.
This arrangement is far superior.
You might almost refer to that as the division and specialisation of labour, Sam. But it will never catch on.
“the television gardener, said having a “stake” in the land was essential to ensure a new generation was interested in plants and flowers.”
Maybe, but why on earth would we want to push people into being interested in plants and flowers? As opposed to, say, amateur astronomy, pigeon fancying, or the pedestrianisation of Norwich city centre?
Vietnam have been doing this for many years.
Steve – perhaps males can be enticed into the hobby of female fancying (or male fancying if that’s what they want) rather than pigeon fancying.
Even better, how about duck fancying or chicken fancying – can have the bird and eat it!
Martin – that joke is fowl.
What if you prefer a nice lawn instead? Will Big Monty have you arrested?
I’m right in saying Monty Don writes books about gardening. Under his plan lots more people would have to buy books on gardening. Greedy self interest pure and simple. Screw him.
The Courageous State will then charge us income tax and VAT on the deemed value of fruit & veg from our gardens, and NI on the notional wages of employing ourselves to grow it.
You know what would also be a really good idea? If everybody had a little furnace in one corner of their compulsory allotment, they could smelt steel. Not only would it improve steel production, it would reconnect people with Britain’s rapidly-dwindling manufacturing heritage. Hard to see what could go wrong, really.
The problem here is really just evangelical enthusiasm. People with an enthusiasm for some certain thing- gardening or sports, or a religion or bicycling, or whatever, tend to convince themselves that the world would be an infinitely better place if everybody did their thing, and that something must be done to encourage it; and then they often wander across the line into thinking making it obligatory would be a Jolly Good Thing.
The problem then becomes that now that we have a Big Government, these obsessives are often able to use it to impose some degree of their obession on everyone, which is one reason of course that Big Government just isn’t a very good idea, if you’re an individualist type.
Actually I think he didn’t say we must garden, but that we must have gardens.
In the London suburbs there are lots of people with gardens who never garden.
Tim your article seems to be based on a false premise
He also suggests that those who don’t want to garden could set up a sharing scheme so other people use it instead. Unfortunately even in the present world which does not provide gardens for all, there are insufficient enthusiastic gardeners willing to do other peoples’ gardening for free (or garden owners who want their neighbours hanging out in their garden at the weekends and evenings). Hence the landscape gardening industry
Why “must” we have gardens? From whom is the extra land to provide these things to be taken? How much will compulsory Dig for Victory vegetable patches add to the cost of a home, given that the land on which houses are built are the biggest cost of their construction? How many extra useless bureaucrats will find a cosy sinecure administering them?
Ian B is basically right here, with the proviso that even given Big Government, almost all of the enthusiasts still get told to get stuffed because their schemes are obviously ridiculous.