I have a cunning plan...


Winter is a challenging time for the green-fingered. At times, we're filled with warm Hygge feelings of snugness. As T. S. Eliot wrote in The Waste Land:

Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

At other times Winter takes its toll, with long nights, biting winds, and the daily 'thwoosh' as a jet of dirty water shoots up your leg from one of the city's many uneven paving slabs. (When T. S. wrote that April is the cruellest month, he had clearly not been to Manchester in January).

However, while Winter rages on and nature hibernates, there is a chink of light for the urban gardener. Around this time of year, tons of gardening catalogues land in the post and my inbox is cluttered with tens of emails advertising 20% off hoes and gnomes. At my most cynical, I could see this as pure capitalist opportunism. But it's also a wake-up call: a call to plan.

I love planning. A couple of months ago I scoped out a plan for my pair of Northern Quarter Growboxes (yup, because one growbox wasn't enough).


Planning is great - and not just because it appeals to my need for order in a fragmented world. For me, planning is also tool of the imagination - it allows you to dream about how things could be - but it's not total fantasy. With a plan, you have the blueprint to make your vision a reality.

And now, I have some big plans to make: me and my partner have got our mucky hands on one of the essentials of the city gardener, an allotment.

In the dying days of 2017, we inherited a plot of sizable proportions, but in a pretty poor state - it was covered in a ragtag assortment of weeds (from creeping couch grass to burly-rooted docks), with rotten raised beds, and layer upon layer of old carpets and plastics.


Well, three weeks into the New Year, and three weekends of getting satisfyingly cold, wet and muddy, we have a clean slate, and can make our cunning plan!


Watch this space as our allotment story begins...

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