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UK: Have men finally lost the plot? Why female-owned allotments are booming

Turn over a new leaf: Rekha Mistry has a blog and Instagram account at rekhagarden kitchen.com CREDIT: Heathcliff O’Malley

Times have changed at Britain’s allotments, as women take to fresh air therapy and growing veg

By Matthew Appleby
The Telegraph
9 November 2020

Excerpt:

Dr Tilly Collins and fellow researcher Ellen Fletcher have found 63.7 per cent of London’s much in-demand allotments are rented by women. And the National Allotment Society estimates that half of all holders nationally are female, compared with 20 per cent in 2003 and 2 per cent in 1973, when the grow-your-own boom began.

Dr Collins believes that a major reason behind the female takeover is because many men have lost their place in society: “There’s a decline in pubs, an increase in divorce rates and more men are socially disconnected.

“Allotments are a space so many men used. The understanding of what an allotment was for was largely about food provision and providing for your family. But what it actually delivered was a space in which you felt productive, with controlled degrees of interaction with people around you. Men are losing that, partly because it’s hard to get an allotment.”

Waiting lists are growing again, with nine in 10 councils experiencing an increase in demand during the coronavirus crisis. “You have to be established in your community to even bother applying and then you have to wait a long time,” adds Dr Collins. “A single, divorced man in rented accommodation may not be in the same place long enough to wait.”

Read the complete article here.