Alida Baxter

Renowned London journalist and author

View from Soho,

Allotments and Gardening

by Other Means

Unless you've been living down a hole in recent years (and not a hole with a carrot in it) you'll know there's been a passionate revival of interest in allotments. The demand for them outstrips supply all over the country, the waiting lists for even the smallest are years long, (more than 86,000 people are currently waiting) and such was the demand that we very nearly had a huge stretch of them, would you believe, within minutes of Oxford Street !

A razed, desolate three-acre waste, facing on to Mortimer Street and left after the demolition of the old Middlesex Hospital , was originally to have been the site of a development even the name of which raised a storm of protest. (Calling it “NoHo”, like some weird sushi service that didn't like customers, incensed inhabitants of both Fitzrovia and Soho , equally and understandably – we do have some taste!) But when that project crashed and burned in the wake of the 2008 banking crisis, an immensely popular campaign gathered support for what would be, apparently, the world's largest area of allotments – there were to have been eight hundred plots. I'd contest this description of “the world's largest”, but I'll come back to the point later.

Meanwhile, everybody got excited and listened to Gardeners Question Time even more intently than usual – there's already a substantial audience here near Oxford Circus, particularly amongst those of us with balconies, flat roofs and a longing for greenery, and people started pointing to the popularity of Farmers Markets and talking about crop rotation.

But sadly, that plan (like so many of the best) was scrapped, and now there's to be a vast building development, with hundreds of thousands of feet of office space, shops and restaurants, and even a few inches allocated for “affordable” homes. The term always makes me smile grimly, in central London . As a frank Councillor once told me, the term “affordable”, when it's used here, doesn't mean what it would mean anywhere else. Basically, if you're not ordering in your oysters and game pie from Harrods or Fortnum & Mason, and using your private jet to get away from the great unwashed in club class, you're not anywhere near the right income bracket.

So we're not going to have our allotments, despite their popularity being at an almost all-time high. The “almost”, incidentally, is an interesting term, because it's a link to the reason why, for decades, people weren't particularly keen on rushing off to check on the scarlet runners, if what was growing wasn't handily in their own gardens.

And it all goes back to the Second World War, when there was no “almost” about it. Along with bombing, and conscription not only for men but for women, and shortages, and queues, and incredibly strict rationing, everybody was told to “dig for victory”. It wasn't just a matter of planting vegetables instead of flowers in your garden – golf courses, school playing fields and even public parks were turned into allotments. Cabbages were grown in Kensington Gardens , and there was a piggery in Hyde Park ! It was positively unpatriotic not to be covered in earth when you weren't fire watching, dodging down shelters or making sure of the blackout, and whilst it was indisputably a time of staggering bravery and endurance, it was also a time of dreariness and exhaustion for much of the sleep-deprived population.

And after the War, when rationing became stricter than ever, people didn't have to be urged to go on growing all they could – they needed to do so. Even food that wasn't officially limited was in short supply.

One of the best depictions I've ever read of what it was like to live then is in an old Agatha Christie novel called “A Murder is Announced”, in which everybody in a country village is swapping marrows for honey, eating horse meat, talking about the lack of coal and coke, and enduring food rationing so tight that making a chocolate cake is a wondrous, rare event for which the ingredients have to be obtained illicitly.

Lucky people had fruit trees and bushes, while growing your own vegetables, and keeping ducks and chickens for their eggs, wasn't a dilettante pastime, it was a necessity, and hard work. For people in towns and cities, without their own gardens, the problems were much worse, and people who tell me how much healthier the British population was when rationing was at its strictest get very short shrift from me. The incidence of rickets amongst children in cities was horrendously high, and there was a bitterly resented dividing line between those with money, who could buy all they wanted on the black market, and ordinary people, who had to survive on no more than the meagre quantities the Government permitted and what they'd spent hours queuing for in erratically-supplied shops.

Small wonder, then, that when rationing finally loosed its grip and people had a choice about it, allotments lost their appeal for many. They were reminders of a dreadfully grim time; now gardens and market stalls blossomed with flowers again. Of course there were those who continued to enjoy the freshness of what they'd grown themselves, and took pride in their produce, but somehow it wasn't talked about – like keeping homing pigeons and whippets, it wasn't fashionable, and with the 'sixties on the horizon, even worse, it wasn't cool.

Nor was my mother's attitude. She'd always adored cutting lettuces and chives from the mountainside garden when we spent summers in a Swiss chalet, and the potatoes and spinach on those holidays were equally delicious. Having to make small talk (never usual in our family) with a suburban couple who weren't even the same species, and desperately trying to find common ground, she clutched at the topic of food, and mentioned not liking chemicals being sprayed on everything, and how she rather missed finding caterpillars when she washed salads or shelled peas. I can remember to this day the seismic shocked silence that greeted this gaffe. Liking creepy crawlies? Her hearers exchanged the look “Fleas”.

“Organic” was, after all, not in the common vocabulary. What was wanted was swift and total annihilation, and what a pity there'd be such a long wait for Agent Orange.

Under rationing, and with access to the roof of our top-floor flat, my mother had patriotically kept chickens, but digging for victory hadn't been an option. Later she grew flowers everywhere, the stairwell under the roof's skylight encircled with shelves crammed with flourishing plants. Next door but one a man tended two roof gardens, having the advantage of a strangely built split-level home, and had hedges ! All over Soho , inhabitants had window boxes at the very least. Other neighbours, in later years, were lovely young men who each night put each-other's hair up in rollers, and turned their roof into an enchanting space, with a silver birch tree and shrubs, and a trellis on the party wall they shared with a taller building. They painted the wall white, and to-day, decades later, the flaking paint is all that remains of their creativity – nobody lives there any longer; the house has been taken over by businesses, and the roof is stripped. No more climbing plants on the trellis, no silver birch and no summer parties with music drifting across the street. In those days, without amplifiers, the music wasn't a nuisance, but a pleasure in which all the street shared.

Other spaces, terraces and balconies bloomed throughout our area. Somehow a couple nearby managed to haul and manhandle a full-size metal park bench up through a window and on to the roof of their building. It looked so inviting amongst the plant pots – just don't ask where they got it. And how we'd have loved to have allotments! They might not have been fashionable at the time, but my family had seen what they could be like.

We used to visit Mannheim, in Southern Germany, usually en route to somewhere else, and the difference in ways of life between England and Germany really interested me, and still does. For a start, in Germany it was and is perfectly normal to rent, and there's no stigma attached to not owning a property. Legislation providing protection for tenants, and rent control, makes renting very attractive, so people do what suits them and their pockets, and when and if they do buy, it's not under a compulsion to reach the first rung of the property ladder, but with the intention of probably living in what they've bought for the rest of their lives. Because it's such a long-term commitment, they may buy a plot of land and only later go on to build.

Also, in towns and cities, whether owned or rented, flats may be the norm, but what's normal for them is a revelation to anyone who's had to squeeze themselves into the British equivalent. No wonder Berlin 's such a popular place to live now – in London that kind of square footage is only available to an oligarch.

Back when we used to go to Mannheim , the by-no-means rich couple we visited lived in a huge, high-ceilinged apartment about the size of a Stately Home wing. And while it might be handy for the Opera House, it had no garden, so of course they had a “Garden House”.

A short ride from their block, and you came to it – not just theirs but all the others'. I remember walking down an avenue of trees so thick with black cherries that we could reach up and pick handfuls of them, the juice bursting in our mouths and staining our fingers. All around us were the “gardens”, each with its small-scale dwelling – some just cottages, others villas, ranging all the way to a mini castle with turrets, as ornate as anything dreamed up by mad King Ludwig of Bavaria. And this is why I'm not convinced by the “largest area of allotments in Europe ” claim for the mooted three acres off Mortimer Street . Because these were in fact allotments, and the area they covered was huge . There probably weren't eight hundred, but that was hardly surprising, given the size of each individual plot.

Our hosts opened their gate and led the way up the short path to their property. It mayn't have been modelled on a castle, but please don't imagine something the size of a beach hut – this was a real little house. The well-equipped kitchen area had running water and cooking facilities, the cupboards were stocked with crockery, cutlery and provisions, and when the lawn had been mowed and ripe fruit collected, the table was laid for lunch. It was like being in Hansel and Gretel's gingerbread house, but much roomier. You could certainly have stayed in it for a weekend, or longer, in summer, when the scented nights must have been lovely. We drank coffee, and spent an afternoon lying on sun loungers, hearing about the winters when the depth of snow made getting to the Garden House as pointless as it was difficult.

I've lived in Germany, and seen an elderly lady dig down through the foot upon foot of permafrost on her balcony for the Christmas provisions she had buried in her natural deep-freeze. Such was the balcony's temperature that a duck took an entire day to thaw!

We may not have the best weather in Britain , but it isn't usually as extreme as it can be elsewhere in Europe ….

What we do have in common with our neighbours across the Channel is the ability to grow vegetables and fruit, provided we have access to the necessary ground. There are even British vineyards these days (perhaps helped by global warming), but ground, in this country, is the one vital commodity so many of us lack.

In London and the Home Counties especially, we're battling with a desperate housing shortage, so a roof overhead is the top priority, and a bit of earth may be a lovesome thing, but it has to be lower down everyone's list of requirements. The mere idea that being without it might be made up for by an allotment as large and luxurious as those I saw in Mannheim is the stuff of fantasies. Nor is it a long-gone luxury, and Germany is far from the only European country to enjoy such an arrangement. Anyone who glued themselves to the Danish TV thriller “The Killing” will know that, in Denmark too, you can have an allotment large enough to accommodate a house, where you can comfortably spend weekends. Over here, luxury is defined as having a shed! And the waiting lists testify that even the smallest British equivalent is a longed-for prize.

I realise how lucky I am in possessing a balcony, although from it my view of gardening Soho has changed radically as the decades have passed. For instance, a block nearby used to boast a glorious terrace outside its topmost flat, with seasonally changed planting and an awning beneath which people dined on warm evenings. Then somebody must have had the idea of making more money by creating more indoor space. The terrace was ripped out, along with the apartment and the awning, and the accommodation acquired a second, upper storey. The whole exterior was covered by grim industrial-grey riveted panels, akin to the sides of a warship, and however nice it might be inside, from the outside it looked like a high-security detention centre. The new version of what was once a richly flowering terrace became an unadorned stretch of charcoal-coloured decking, on which two or three times a year somebody despairing sat for a few minutes with a carton of coffee. It appeared to be not a home but a hive of wire-strewn industry. And planting? There wasn't so much as a leaf.

This model spread along the top of the building, with absolutely no privacy for those who once were able to retire behind walls and doors and were now, behind floor to ceiling glass and at vast cost, constantly face to face with us.

Some occupants minded about this less than others – memorable was one man who did alarming exercises on the furlong of decked balcony available to him, and whose servant regularly fought her way out of the penthouse in wind and lashing rain. Apparently no lowly cleaning implement was allowed inside the premises, for the poor girl would undo a plastic wardrobe moored on the top of the building to collect dusters, cleansers and mops, before going back and setting about her work soaked to the skin. Her toil over, she would make the return journey to restore all the materials and equipment to their ghetto. It's a miracle she wasn't required to climb in the wardrobe with them! Nothing grew there – just the wretched servant's equipment.

Recently, though, new occupants with heart have transformed the same massive outside space into a roof garden: a lovely nine foot tree is stirred by winds and breezes, shrubs and flowers of all kinds are growing in tubs, the balcony is framed by lights, and a pretty table and chairs are in use.

And alongside this enchantment, what was once the grim site of industry has become a home again, with flags at festival times and a sort of summer house cum cocoon where people can curl up in privacy. That particular balcony is a work in progress, but I can see the pleasant way it's heading.

It's heartening, too, to look down on a small, lush green patch that other neighbours with flair have created on a lower storey, where they have set up bee hives. Bee keeping on roofs is really in at the moment, and the flowers on my balcony benefit, but there is just one little problem … In 2010 bees swarmed in a bulging mass on a Soho lamp post! And an area which thought it had seen everything discovered it hadn't.

Nobody seems to have got too worked up, though. There wasn't exactly an over-reaction – in fact, beyond a photograph or two in the newspapers, there wasn't much reaction at all. Until the same thing happened in 2011, on the posh, Mayfair side of Regent Street . The police response was immediate and overwhelming – the bees had swarmed near Liberty , and the Apple store, for Heaven's sake! The area was closed off for hours, there were high visibility jackets all over the news, and anyone would have thought there'd been a terrorist attack.

But that won't stop this practice – according to a BBC radio programme, London is one of the very few places in Britain (if not the only one) where the bee population is increasing, in contrast to the country-wide decline. And there's even a company which supplies honey sourced purely from London bees!

Another sweeping change I've seen (apart from bee-keeping) has been in the uniform decking which now covers so many roofs. Top floor flats above commercial premises used to be lived in by caretakers, but accommodation is at such a premium that the job has almost vanished, and a lot of individuality along with it. Once you could contrast one person's clematis with another's tomatoes, I knew a man who was admired for his vines and runner beans, and an outside space above a public laundry was a riot of flowers. But a lot of businesses seem to prefer easy-care conformity – hence the amount of decking and plain seats, flanked at most by a couple of tubs of pruned-to-death shrubs. Many caretakers have been replaced by office workers, and the blank look is common all across my view now.

Not that it has won completely. I can still see, here and there, outcrops of foliage, sometimes delicate, sometimes dense. Nor need you, if you stroll about the West End, be denied an insight into this phenomenon – look up as you walk along Bond Street or Regent Street, through Maddox Street or across Hanover Square , and you'll see, at the very least, the tips of waving branches. Those who welcome even the smallest town equivalent of a garden are keeping the green flag flying.

And intriguingly, the area of Soho I live in has never been so verdant at street level, despite the plague of decking above. Trees have been planted in Carnaby Street and its surroundings, are surviving despite the road works, and march from Marshall Street down Broadwick Street . There are hanging baskets heavy with flowers on the lamp posts, and window boxes above the shops, cafes, pubs and wine bars all around Carnaby Street and what's now called the Newburgh Quarter. Window boxes were once the province only of flats!

It wasn't a business enterprise, it was a neighbourhood hobby. We might not have had allotments, but every bit of available space was used by those with a will and potting compost – fire escapes, areas outside basements, and of course roofs.

And it's when I look again at my view over the West End that I realise the biggest change of all isn't in bees, or even decking, it's been caused by the onward march of Health and Safety. Every housetop, every store top, everything everywhere bristles with guard rails. And I remember the couple who got the park bench up through a window, and the boys with the birch tree, and the neighbours who sunbathed amidst their plants six floors from the street …. And most of all I remember the flat in which I grew up.

That has had guard rails around its roof for years now – I was able to see them, until a new construction got in the way. But there were no rails when my mother kept chickens, or when I danced on the roof to the music of Liberty 's Christmas parties. Or when the neighbour with the hedges waved and called to us.

My fearless mother climbed on a chair inches from a sheer drop, to hammer a nail into the next-door building so that she could put up a washing line.

Nuts, completely nuts. So why do I look back not with horror but affection? Because my mother also grew nasturtiums and canary creeper, and there was planting beyond the back door of the ironmonger's, and the spaces behind shops were miniature gardens, and hadn't been filled in as every inch has been and continues to be now. If you can't go any farther up or down, you can still go inwards, so every hollow square of houses in my area is being eclipsed by ever-uglier blocks. Doubtless to be topped off with sensible guard rails and (of course) decking.

One day, if I get my wish, the people who live here will get their allotments. Perhaps the on-going financial mayhem will make some enormous West End development too dicey, and a razed area (even if it's not the one off Mortimer Street ) will be turned over to plots. And somebody somewhere will realise that to see your own plants grow is a natural human instinct, and, amidst all to-day's troubles, it soothes the soul.

© Alida Baxter

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