lifeisland – Manor Garden Olympic Allotments

If you live within reach of the Olympic park and have ever thought about getting an allotment plot, you can help our campaign by registering your interest through our survey.

We believe that substantial areas of allotments will be the best possible use of the land that will be available in the Olympic Legacy Park post-2012, and we want to do everything possible to make this happen.

Plentiful allotments will not only help address issues of local food production and rising food prices, but are highly beneficial for people’s health and well being, are a major contribution to biodiversity, enliven the landscape and are a vital social resource and community asset.

We know that there can be waiting lists of up to 5 years for a plot on existing sites in some of the Olympic Boroughs, but to be able to objectively demonstrate the scale of interest in and demand for allotments we have commissioned our own survey, with the responses being processed by a professional survey company.

20,000 leaflets have been distributed with local newspapers, but you can print it out and send it with your contact details to Manor Garden Allotments c/o Shelton Associates, Freepost SF186, SHEFFIELD S17 3LE.

SURVEY LEAFLET

Jan Stradtmann’s photographs of eerily lit sheds at the Manor Gardens site were taken in the last months of public access to the site. 6 months later, all trace had been erased, the soil itself being removed in the symbolic cleansing of the area of every sign of history or previous human activity.

The freshfacedandwildeyed08 New Graduates Show is on at the Photographers Gallery, Great Newport St WC2H 7HY 21 June – 6 July 2008

Ali Qasim’s documentary of the last months of the original Manor Gardens, first shown on the Community Channel in November 2007, can now be viewed online here

It’s due to be shown again on Community Channel on Tue 24 Jun at 10:35am.

Continue Reading »

By the end of November 2007, less than a month after the new allotment site was occupied, it became clear there were problems with the site. Much of it was extremely hard to dig, vegetables struggled to grow or rotted, and plots became dramatically waterlogged after rain. Before long the soil began to smell rancid. Inappropriate construction methods combined with unsuitable soil are responsible, resulting in months of unnecessary effort by the plotholders displaced here by the Olympics – who have made valiant efforts to start again from scratch.
Continue Reading »

From ARD TV’s Nachtmagazin news program, 23rd May 2008.
ARD contrast the green claims of the Olympic authorities with the reality of the destruction of our allotment community. The start of the construction of the huge and expensive stadium is shown to be at the expense of a multicultural green place where “life was good, until the diggers came”.
“Look how bad the soil is, it’s nothing but mud”, says Hassan at the new site.
“There’s no comparison – it was paradise at the old place, this is like gardening in the middle of a swamp” says Reg.
At the end the narrator tells of a gardener having to be rescued from the mud – a ‘Danger of Sinking’ sign is shown with the comment “Extreme gardening with warning sign – Olympic Games for Hassan & Reg”

Watch it online here
“This Was Forever”, by Mark Aitkin and young filmmakers from polkadotsonraindrops, is about Manor Gardens allotments and the struggle of our community to hold its own in spite of Olympic development for the 2012 games.

This film is one of the Films from the River Lee series – filmed over a year until the allotments were demolished in 2007. Funded by First Light.

Concerns about the construction of the new allotments at Marsh Lane appear to be justified, as any period of heavy rain leaves pools of water on many of the plots and the top layer of soil completely saturated. Any plants that begin growing in these conditions are likely to die when the soil dries as their roots won’t have developed properly. In places the soil is so compacted it is almost impossible to dig, and in other places smells bad or is like a bog. Plotholders had been given no information about the sourcing of the 10000 tonnes of new soil that had to be imported, and it was believed by some to originate from the ‘highly contaminated’ Olympic site, having been artificially cleaned. There have since been reassurances that this is not the case but questions remain about its quality. Continue Reading »

In the first week of November plotholders were finally able to move in and try to start new gardens on the bare new site at Marsh Lane, Waltham Forest – formerly a horse-grazed meadow valued by locals. Most had to give up their plots on the Olympic site in July, abandoning valuable mature fruit trees, asparagus beds, grape vines and swathes of naturalised herbs and flowers.
Continue Reading »

Allotment gardener and Evening Standard report Valentine Low has reviewed Thomas Pausz’s Community Shed reconstruction on his blog, ‘One Man and his Dig’.
It has a photo of the recreated shed, and the story of how Thomas discovered Manor Gardens – after wandering in and getting locked inside. At the time he didn’t encounter the fabled Community Shed though, due to its secluded location and the layout of the gardens which can seem like a maze to newcomers.

Funnily enough, when he came to do his project, he realised that the one shed he had not discovered was the community shed. He turned that omission into a virtue, by deliberately avoiding any photographs of the old shed, and instead re-created it by asking plot-holders what it looked like. They all had quite different memories; one recalled there being a photograph of the Queen inside, while another swore blind it was decorated with a picture of a Page 3 girl. Easy to confuse the two, I suppose. His technique explains why his shed – which is currently on view outside the Royal College of Art, next to the Royal Albert Hall – is not an exact replica of the original. I saw it the morning before it was completed, and told Thomas that I thought the original had more carpet, and more comfy chairs. (It was very well appointed, the Manor Gardens shed).

The shed can be seen at the Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore until Feb 7th 2008 – contact Thomas Pausz on 07957374463