Yay! for once I can help, I have listed 2 sites of interest, one of which has included a history of allotments.
your local council/parish (church area) has a responsibily to provide allotments at minimal rent, if there is a demand, UK land prices are high! so councils arn't keen to open them, but have too, although they will fight it, as to sell them off the Sec of State has to Okay it, secretary doesn't sound important but they are one of the 4 most important government members in the UK (which includes the Prime Minister)
My village, I lived in one before last, didn't have allotments, and my garden was big by UK standards about 75 foot x 40 foot, and I looked into allotments, the village next door 1.5 miles away had one but vastly over subscribed, about a year after, a elderly member of a important business family and owner of a farm, left our village a field on the edge of it, with the most amazing views, most of it was put over to a area for families to go and picnic, tables and chairs provided and the rest to allotments, I applied and it was over subscribed 4 times over, only 6 allotments! I know four of the holders, it runs from year to year unless for some reason the allotment appears to not being kept them it returns to the parish, all four I know also use the their own gardens, the biggest of which I would say is 35 foot by 15 maybe 20 foot at a push, and bear in mind when a UK person says garden we mean every thing including lawn, front of the house, everything! yard to us, is a small concreated space of about 15 foot x 10 foot,(if you are lucky, and these are not city dwellers, this is villages) garden is anything with soil! even under the paving of your car! I am a pig in S99T over here!

http://www.winghampc.kentparishes.gov.uk/userfiles/File/Meeting_14_July_08.doc oh and I included this because it shows the water bill for the allotments for the year which the Parish council pay, out the the rent per year... we use a lot of water butts. and also the fire brigade ask for permission to use it, I assume this is on free, just good manners to ask, we don't have to pay for public places, unless profit making.
http://www.allotment.org.uk/
Also given the history of allotments you should look into common ground, also an ancient right for us Brits to graze our animals, and public rights of way, foot paths, bridal ways, free beaches and parks...oh I am pineing... thats the biggest thing, I miss about the UK the right to roam!

Here is a link that might be useful: allotment forum

Heather,
Thank you. I will check the sites.

I love to read your posts. You write like you are short of breath. Like you have been running for the last ten minutes instead of writing for the last ten minutes. I hope you understand that statement is intended as a compliment.

I read a blog on allotments written by a proper British gentleman and couldn't understand half the words he wrote. Almost as if he wrote with an accent.

Ted

There's tons of stuff on youtube about UK allotments. Allotment gardeners over there seem to be unusually keen amateur film-makers - a lot of them are very well done.

Makes me want to do a youtube piece in response since it would be so different from the very ordered and regimented british style - the wild american counter-point......

I am from NJ but work in Delaware. There are a few state parks here that you are able to rent plots to garden. The plots are 20'x40' and rent for $35/season! You have the rights to them for the next year if you choose. I would guess there is a total of 2 acres of plots.

sorry dyslexic! So don't do grammer, spell checker only goes so far! for friends, I tend to write at the end of a letter.....,,,,,;;;;;; scatter them as you will.
and I am always running, running, 4 year old twin boys! thank you for the compliment.

I used to post at a message board ...sorry can't remember the name...I think it was provided by a british gardening magazine...I'll see if I can find it...and I too just got so enthralled with the allotments. Many of them blog about their gardens and it is so interesting. I have a bunch of them that I was keeping track of until the cancer jumped up and bit me. I'll see if I can provide a link..

Here is the magazine I was talking about ...they have a nice board for information. What amazes me is the amount of food they get from these plots and the way they have them set up to grow vegetables and fruit etc on a small space. You can find the forums from the homepage ...

Grow your own

Here is a link that might be useful: allotments

Here's a link to the forums. You'll notice that there is a seperate forum for allotments..

Here is a link that might be useful: Grow your own forums

Hello Ted

I saw your post over on the Brit allotments forum and they gave you very full replies. There is only one thing which I wanted to add and it concerns your question,"Must you pay a yearly fee even if you only use the allotment during gardening season?"

In the UK there isn't really a 'gardening season'. There is a peak growing season but we garden all the year round, if you see the difference, although we are busier in spring and summer. I've had my allotment (in a city and 5 mins walk from my house) for about 18 years and as long as I keep at least 2/3 cultivated I retain the tenancy. I'm down there 12 months of the year. In the winter it's digging, pruning, making and spreading compost, keeping the grass mowed and checking the brassicas. In spring it's preparing the gound and sowing. Then there's successional sowing until the last things which for me are broad beans (favas) and garlic which go in in November. By February I'm off again with sowing peas and favas. There is something to harvest pretty well all year round even if it's just a bunch of herbs.

I don't recall exactly what this year's rent was but it's round about £30(ca $50) including water.) (There are several taps (faucets) and there is one right by my allotment.) The site is owned by the local county council and they also mow the paths around the perimeter of the allotments, and supply piles of leaves in autumn. We have an allotments association and through them we can buy seeds, fertilisers and garden sundries quite cheaply.

Allotments really are great. When I first got mine they were easy to get and many were lying untended. But now it is very fashionable and there are waiting lists in most places, especially towns. But remember our home gardens are microscopic compared with the typical US 'yard'. (Heather has explained the nomenclature). I live in a city centre and the garden (Brit use of the word) at my house is about 15 ft x 25ft in total. Not exactly Texas scale!

Ruthieg, Flora, Heather;

Thank You. Ruthie or Flora, could you please go help Heather, sounds like her twins may be getting a little rowdy.

Yes Flora, I've been on the British allotment forum for awhile. It's fascinating what they do with a garden/allotment. I think of myself as a crowded garden grower (getting the most value from the smallest space), but they put me to shame. What I really like about their allotments is they do everything in soil. Raised Beds, containers, everything. In this country it has become fashionable to grow in sterile environments (purchased or mixed potting mixes). In Great Britain, they are growing in the same dirt the Romans grew their vegetables in and it isn't worn out. I've even read occasional reports of British gardeners finding small caches of gold coins some Roman gardener thought he was hiding from the tax collector in his garden a thousand years earlier.

Fascinating!

Thanks again.

Ted

Hi Ted

Yes, that thing about growing in the soil is something which struck me on these forums, especially the 'Soil, compost and mulch' forum. Lots of new gardeners in the States seem to believe that they can't start growing anything unless they import bought soil or concoct fancy 'mixes' with loads of 'amendments' - a term I'd never heard until I came to these sites. There may be places in the States where the soil is poor or chemically difficult for growing but there seems to be a general feeling that the native ground is somehow no use for gardening. I get the impression people often garden on top of their land rather than in it. I've not found any coins yet but I regularly dig up clay pipes from the 18th and 19th centuries and also lots of bits of Victorian china.

Flora

ps there are allotments all over the UK, not just England.

Hi Ted... I have two adjacent plots on a very active allotment in St Ives, Cambridgeshire. You can get a taste of what owning an English allotment is like by viewing my blog site below, which includes pictures right from the start of when I took over what looked like a patch of rough field.

Up to ten years ago allotments had been suffering years of declining interest which peaked in the 1940s during WW2. On my blog I have a satellite map of where my plots are... since it's based on images taken a few years ago it looks like the plots are unused. Now they're very much in demand. At our site there are over 100 plots with the Town Council opening up more, but the waiting list still keeps growing!

I'm aiming to write a history of English allotments this winter. It's a fascinating story which dates back to Saxon times (700AD on) & includes sad times from the 17th century onwards when families were thrown out of their homes as landowners sought to make a better return on their land by grazing sheep rather than continuing with arable farming. An employee who one week had to ask his employers' permission to leave the village (& actually never needed to) the next week found himself & his family thrown out of the village homeless & jobless. Even today the evidence of this is visible in English churches in the middle of the countryside with no visible village (since it was raised to the ground).

Hope this helps, John

Here is a link that might be useful: An English Allotment Garden

Just to speak to the imported soil fad - it is a bit trendy at the moment amongst new gardeners. I think it speaks to that American impatience thing: sod or freshly cleared land requires a bit of time to get vegetable-friendly, and the typical new gardener is chomping at the bit meanwhile. In this respect, there may be a real difference between typical soils in the UK and NA; I believe over there soils tend to have a more balanced native ph whereas here they are often too high or low. And of course the allotments have generally been vegetable gardens for a long time whereas here the average new gardener is using land that has never been used for that purpose.

I don't know anything about how mobile English families are, but another difference might be that many Americans move frequently.

I know from experience that it takes 3-5 years minimum to get fresh-busted sod into good, productive gardening condition. I've rarely lived in the same house for 5 years. (The worst was moving 9 times in 13 years).

Allotments are available also in certain parts of the US. Just here in Ann Arbor, there are allotments at University of Michigan apartments, at a large private condo subdivision, at a City public park, and at another place on public land.

Although I strongly support the idea, I note that the allotments I have seen look a bit more "run down", if I can use the expression, than the local veggie gardens. By that I mean they have more of the perennial, or self-growing stuff (things like herbs, favas, rhubarb, asparagus, brambles), more weeds, and less of the more care-intensive veggies. Not living next to your garden makes a difference. Not to mention that the garden can not receive all those wonderful composted kitchen scraps. Surely it is also worse w.r.t. insects, rabbits, etc. That probably explains why there are lots of marigolds and garlic, too. They evolved their gardens to take care of themselves, after repeatedly getting broccoli, lettuce and corn eaten.

I Have no knowledge of allotments, but wanted to say...Isn't history amazing?! Even in gardening there is so much history to learn about and Historical people to teach us. Now Im so intrigued I have to look it all up=)
Connie.