Forty years of looking after Coventry's 3,000 allotments...

Forty years of looking after Coventry's 3,000 allotments...

Postby dutchman » Thu Aug 08, 2013 7:32 pm

Mary Griffin marks National Allotments Week by looking back on the peaks and troughs of Len Parnell's four decades of allotmenteering

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Len Parnell who is retiring after more than 40 years of looking after Coventry’s 3,000 allotment plots

Sliding open the glass door to the greenhouse a warm whiff of tomato plants wafts out.

“You just don’t get that in the shop,” smiles Len Parnell , cutting a cucumber from its stem.

His relationship with homegrown produce began more than 40 years ago when he took to growing fruit and veg to make ends meet.

“I had three kids and a mortgage,” he says.

“Back then it was an economic thing. You did it to put food on the table.

“It was a site in Holbrooks. An old guy had been looking after it for years and years but he was nearly 90 and one day he said ‘Could you take it on, Len?’ So I did.

“Then I got involved with the whole district, and then I ended up taking on the national allotment association.

“It’s like everything. You offer to do something small and it snowballs.”

Really, Len’s four decades of local, national and international allotmenteering is more of an avalanche.

He’s held plots all over the city and negotiated with Coventry City Council a system to make the city’s allotments self-governing so that now, all but the smallest sites in Coventry have their own committees to deal with their daily running and annual rent collection, with all money being ploughed back into infrastructure on site.

He was president of the national association for three years and was made a life vice-president in recognition of his work.

In the international association, which is made up of international organisations representing more than three million allotment holders, he found himself travelling each year to France, the base of the international office, as well as visiting various European countries, representing Britain in Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Poland and the Czech Republic.

“Allotments became my life,” he says.

“But I think gardening’s a great hobby and it’s so good for you, physically and mentally.

“You can go to a gym and pump weights – and I’ve done that – but there’s no fresh air in the gym.

“Would you think you’re in a city here?” he asks, as a pair of cabbage whites dart past, chasing each other around the plot.

“You learn so much,” he adds, “with all the wildlife and the biodiversity, you pick up things that you can really enjoy.

“Over the years allotments have become much more of a sociable thing.

“In the old days people really weren’t as friendly. The attitude was much more ‘This is my plot, that’s your plot and that’s that’.

“But that’s changed over the last 15 to 20 years and more and more people are bringing groups on to the site now.

“For instance, next door but one there’s an Irish guy who gets all his mates up and you know here’s here because they don’t stop laughing. It’s lovely.”

But over his long tenure Len surely must have seen his fair share of spats and bust-ups.

“Oh yes!” he bellows, giving a knowing look over the rim of his bifocals.

“It’s personalities in close quarters,” he says.

“Often though,” he says, “it’s petty squabbles.”

Over the decades Len has seen growers come and go as the popularity of allotments boomed before sinking and has now risen again to a peak.

He reels through a long list of sites that have been lost over the years, but believes the current enthusiasm is here to stay.

He says: “There was a big demand for allotments in the 1970s and when demand was high we took on 15 new sites.

“But then in the 80s there was this “get rich quick” attitude and people became so keen to move up the ladder.

“They didn’t want a Mini, they wanted a Porsche, and they didn’t have time to grow an allotment. So there was a decline and many sites were only two-thirds occupied, and over the last 20 years we’ve lost about 10 sites.

“Then in the late nineties a rise began and now it’s an allotment peak right across the country.

He adds: “With all the promotion of healthy eating and active lifestyles allotments are really on the up.

“They are really getting at kids in schools, encouraging them to grow things in school projects and introducing them to vegetables their mum and dad might never have put in front of them.

“And the kids go home and educate the parents, so that really creates a surge.

“There are many more young women with families on allotments now.

“When I started, around one in 20 were women, but now they make up more than 30 per cent.

“The nationalities of the gardeners has changed too and these days people are growing much more exotic things.

“When I started it was almost a monoculture system of potatoes, onions and nothing else.

“But then people started buying kohlrabi seeds because they look unusual, like Sputniks, and different varieties of vegetables that were previously unknown.

“On some sites you’ll find Asian gardeners growing chilli peppers that burn your fingers when you pick them, never mind when you eat them.”

Len’s own plot has all the allotment essentials – potatoes, onions, tomatoes, carrots and beans. There’s a patch devoted to courgettes and squashes with bright yellow fruits peeping through big green leaves, and a central cluster of raspberry and currant bushes under netting.

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The gateway to the plot is awash with colour where Len’s wife, Jean, is growing crocuses, irises, lupins and giant poppy seed heads to feed her flower arranging hobby.

“She took a horticultural class at college,” he says proudly, “she’s ever so good – a real corker.”

But the love for growing hasn’t been inherited by Len and Jean’s three children.

He recalls: “One day my wife said to our eldest, ‘Gary, go down to the allotment and dig us up some spuds for dinner’.

“He came back all right, but he’d stuck the fork right through his foot, so that was the first and last time he tried gardening.”

As a former car factory worker, Len who was born and bred in Coventry, spent time with all the city’s major manufacturers, including the black taxi maker, Carbodies (now LTI), Riley, Armstrong Siddeley, Triumph, and eventually retiring from Jaguar before going on to become a caretaker, working at more than 100 schools across the city.

He retired from the Allotment Association in June before turning 80 last month. But he has no plans to stop gardening and reckons the next 40 years of allotmenteering looks bright.

“We’ve got a quarter of a million people on waiting lists,” he says.

“I don’t think this demand is a fad. I think it will carry on, especially with a growing population and the modern demand for land.

“And I think people are realising if we don’t use it we’ll lose it.

“I think what we’re seeing is serious interest and there are so many schools involved and lots of sites with groups of kids, this should be something that lasts long into the future.”

*For more details about how to rent an allotment in Coventry telephone Queenie Smith on 024 7627 4553.

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