The hours of repose

‘Growing your own’ is becoming mainstream again.

What better way to enjoy the glorious weather at the weekend than to get out and plant? As a newcomer to this game I’m concentrating on high value or unusual herbs and veggies, or the ones – like potatoes – that taste so much better dug straight from the garden. Some lettuce, leeks, spinach and chard somehow survived the winter frosts, and I supplemented these by fresh planting. We have a couple of trays of chilli seedlings for the first time – why buy ones flown in when you can grow your own?

I’m not quite ready to go communal myself but I’m intrigued by how vegetable growing might be a core ‘grass root’ activity feeding the new localism. Incredible Edible appears to have had a truly regenerative effect in Todmorden – it is inspiring.

Le Corbusier isn’t the first urban designer to spring to mind when thinking about allotments. If you google ‘The City of Tomorrow’ you will find principally those familiar images ‘Cartesian’ skyscrapers we have learned to mock.

But elsewhere in the book (which is well worth a read) Le Corbusier vividly describes his ‘garden city housing scheme on the honeycomb principle’. By grouping dwellings together, each with their own terrace, shared land is available in the centre of the block 'just outside your own home'. As well as 150 square yards for communal sports, ‘close at hand are the 150 square yards of kitchen garden joined up with the similar plots belonging to the neighbours.’ By rationalising the layout the allotments are automatically watered. ‘There would be a farmer in charge of 100 such plots and heavy cultivation employed. The inhabitant comes back from his work and with the renewed strength given him by his games, set to work on his garden. His plot, cultivated in a standardised and scientific way, feeds him for the greater part of the year. There are storehouses on the boarders of each group of plots in which he can store his produce for the winter. Orchards lie between the houses and the cultivated ground. This new type of housing scheme turns the inhabitant into a producer.’

Published in 1924, even more relevant today.