DIGGING THE DIRT THE ALLOTMENT: WHAT'S THE POINT?

Growing your own offers a heady combination of tough challenges and sheer joy in the ongoing battle with nature. This month John Holloway is busy pondering the ongoing question: just why do we do it?

- John Holloway

As an allotmenteer or kitchen gardener, do you ever question why you do it? Whether you're driven by necessity or desire? By family tradition or lifestyle benefit? By an innate drive to connect with the earth or a desire to grow the biggest or the best? Is it something you took to instinctively, by serendipity or via a conscious, planned objective? Does it matter? Probably not.

Yet thousands and thousands of us willingly undertake this manual, hard, backbreaking activity with no guarantee of success, toiling with and against nature in the sure and certain knowledge of an uncertain outcome. Is there a masochistic streak in us that is determined to grow something? Are we accepting of likely failure yet contentedly determined to grow something no matter the odds?

Having an allotment is time-consuming. Our green and pleasant land is awash with sheds and plots that have often been handed down through the generations. For some, it's a way of life. Perhaps, for some, it's a way of coping with life.