Allotments worldwide

[andham2000]

Is it only in the UK that there are allotments, I believe that there are some in Holland too. Where else in the world has them, does anyone know?

[gavin]

Just a few other places! 

- http://www.jardins-familiaux.org/;
- http://www.cityfarmer.org/ - lots of international links, as well as Canadian;
- called community gardens in US?  http://www.communitygarden.org/;

- Turkey http://bagevi.com/,  Japan, Burma (try a google on "floating allotments" (!), and I'm sure lots of others!

All best - Gavin

[Svea]

they have them in germany, called 'schrebergarten'
however, they are usually much bigger than allotment plots in the UK - also usual for people to build little 'chalet' style garden houses on them - you are not allowed to live there but people are known to sleep over on the weekends if they want to work/be in their garden.
lots of people grow flowers in them, too - i would say as much as 50/50 veg to flower ratio

dont know of any other kind of organised 'movement' otherwise.....

[Sarah-b]

I guess the dachas in Russia are similar - although often people stay the whole summer there. Do a google search on Dacha - there are some fascinating pictures and stories out there.

Sarah

[busy_lizzie]

I have a German friend who lives in Greifswald in what used to be East Germany. They live in an apartment but they have a garden with a little chalet attached just like Svea describes. It does sound to be the equivilent of an allotment.

They have invited me to visit and stay in the chalet,  as their apartment is so cramped, and I have often thought that would be an interesting experience. busy_lizzie

[Svea]

lizzie, why not? those little garden houses usually have a fully functioing bathroom, a kitchenette and one (or two) main rooms for sleeping/living. not bad for weekend accomodation
(and i am a transplant from east germany, too )

[busy_lizzie]

One of these days Svea.  Welcome to the Board by the way, was nice to read your message. busy_lizzie

[kenkew]

I'm living in Belgium....an' I've got an allotment c/w concrete 'hut'. It's quite cosy. Staying overnight isn't allowed but in summer some people are there from sunrise to sunset. I pay about £25 a year for the 10x20 metre plot.

[Lady Cosmos]

I just read in an old magazine for amateur- gardeners 1997 there are3,2 million people in Europe (with registration) having a veg.garden/allotment. 
In the Netherlands 11% has an allotment and in North west Europe is that 30% !!!.
I know in Belgium is an allotment with even a compost-toilet!!! Great.
www.volkstuinen-gentbrugge.be
It looks very nice, well set up and well-considered.

[ina]

11% of the Dutch population has an allotment? I wonder where that magazine got it's numbers from. I would be surprised if it was even 1%. In and around my town of 70.000 inhabitants, I think there are at most 400 allotments total, if that many.

In Holland there are two types of allotments.

One is the recreational type which are more like gardens with a small weekend 'house' on it, found normally around the bigger cities. People use these as get-aways in free time to enjoy nature, putter in the garden a bit, making it look pretty and relax.
 
The other type is, what I call real allotments (volkstuinen), many with only veggies and others mixed, veggies and ornamental. These will often have sheds or even small, one room chalets but no overnighting, many have only a toolbox. The main object here is gardening.

[Lady Cosmos]

Ina, where I live in the Bollenstreek I think it is about right.
The magazine read: veg.gardens/ alotments!! I was not very surprised about the total.
Many, many of the people here have a big or small part of their garden in use as veg.plot./flower plot. Often you see signs in the streets that there is a possibility to buy veggies/ flowers.
This part of the country is very agriculture and horticulture.
(We are having a group of a thousand people and we have together 65 allotments and many of the rest of us have a small veg plot at home ( about 30-100 sq mtr) for potatoes, lettuce ed.
I am not surprised at all.

This is a picture of my neighbours wintercarrot stall.

[Mrs Ava]

Wow LC, that is some carrot harvest!  Carrot and orange soup, carrot and corriander soup, carrot mash, carrot chips, carrot gratin, carrot salad.......carrot wine maybe?!?!   I would be thrilled if that were my harvest.

[westsussexlottie]

Just seen this post - so you don't get carrot fly then - what's the trick???

[annieb]

Prior to and just after WW2 here in Norway community allotment schemes were common in the (few) urban areas.  There are still still a _very_ few kommune-hage (also called parsellager) in Norway, but mostly confined to Oslo now (with immense and depressing waiting lists, 10-15 years isn't uncommon).

http://www.21firstst.com/parsell/parsellhager.asp?id=4

We've lost almost all of our parsellager in Bergen (where I live) and I'm making a pest of myself with the local council to get something underway again, though of course that will likely be a many-year-project (big sigh).

The problem seems to be that Norway is still a relatively rural country, with only a few major urban areas (Oslo, Bergen, Stavanger, Trondheim pretty much covers it) and fewer than 5 million inhabitants in the country altogether.  The property values inside the cities are high enough that during the oil booms of the post 70's up to the present time, and the resultant building booms with the influx of the oil moneys, all our allotment lands were gobbled up to make ticky-tacky housing and commercial real estate. 

Most Norwegians who want a low-impact lifestyle simply avoid buying property inside the cities.  This leaves those of us stuck in the cities in the unenviable position of having only small house gardens (or no garden at all).

For the nonce, I've had to make do with intensive gardening in our standard-house-sized-gardenette, hanging and container gardening and guerilla gardening.  I so miss my lottie from my uni days in London. =(  Husbandguy has promised that we'll make a move to a surrounding area in our 2 year plan, however that will mean buying a car which is something I absolutely wanted to avoid.  (We use bicycles or foot for the most part now, with an occasional bus ride).

Yes, I'm probably ridiculously anti-fossil-fuel... which is tragically amusing since Husbandguy is a marine engineer actually working for BigEvilOilCo, Ltd. 

Annie in Norway

PS Yes, it's one of the wonders of my life that a card carrying hippie peacenik tree-hugging whale kissing freak like me could wind up marrying a suit and tie big oil business conservative like Husbandguy.  Have I mentioned we don't talk politics much at our house?  

[kitty]

lol!
i think you must both learn the art of 'ducking'!!haha!we try to be as green as poss too-but we live 6 miles outside the city in which we work..so we investigated motor cars-a merc,.smart was the best 'green' car-even tho ours is red and black!
people round about us laughed about our'half a car'but we have had 2x 10'x14' carpets in there-numerous garden center buys-including huuuuuuge laburnum tree and 3 biiiiiiig fruit trees.......you can get anything you like in there-where theres a will theres a way!
not so good if you have kids tho-ours is 26 so he has his own car!

[Robert_Brenchley]

The 'schrebergarten' are apparently very much like the Guinea Gardens where I have my plot, except that almost all the old summerhouses there were destroyed by the Council after tjhey took over the site at the end of the 60's, in the mane of a policy which set out to make all allotment sites across the city uniform. It's the last remnant of land which was parcelled up all round the city and let to urban dwellers, who wouldn't have had gardens in those days. It started about 1720, round here at least, when the rent locally was a guinea a year, hence the name. They were held on long leases so people felt much more free to invest in them than they do with today's allotments.

[SueM]

This site has a map of Rotterdam in the 17th century, with the town surrounded by allotments. http://grid.let.rug.nl/~welling/maps/rotterdam.jpg

Sue

[Robert_Brenchley]

That's how English towns would have been around 1900; I think it started a bit later here. There were around 2000 plots around Birmingham.

[OldWolf]

Chuckles, it was the chance to  have an allotment that helped me come home to england from the US it seems after all the foot dragging Cohoes NY finally got an allotment site ( community gardens  there) but still now i am NOT working at 2 jobs sixdays a week so yes i can enjoy my allotment plot in and time with my daughter who is keen to join daddy on the alottment 

[John Lund]

I have travelled a lot in E. Europe and the 'schrebergarten' type of allotment is very common in Poland, Hungary etc.  Passing them in the train one sees lots of people, especially  older folk, working or just sitting enjoying the sun.  Probably younger people are out at weekends. Most people live in apartment blocks in the cities and there are loads of very cheap trams & buses to the suburbs where these allotments are.  They give a great opportunity for poorer people (and there are lots) to relax and also to grow food.