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From £10 beds to £150 a month mini-parks: Londoners are renting out their gardens for the ‘Airbnb of allotments’

London has a lot of parks – but not many places you can grow your own veg

“Forty-one London sites have closed completely in the past seven years and with over 30,000 people now estimated to be on waiting lists, there is on average a delay of four to five years before receiving a plot.”

By Josiah Mortimer
My London
July 4, 2022

Excerpt:

AllotMe’s backers say they want to make “finding a vegetable patch as easy as ordering a taxi or booking a B&B.” Listings in London already include a garden in New Eltham for £35 a month, with the owner saying: “I don’t have time to look after my garden which I originally hoped to turn it into a vegetable growing farm.” It lists facilities including a “shed / Storage, watering can” and tools.

Another listing is a garden described as a “blank canvas” in Honor Oak for £40 a month: “[This is] more than an allotment on offer – [it’s] a whole back garden that currently is only tended to only when the weeds creep back. Work and life do not allow me to enjoy my garden as much as I would like, so it is yours to do as you please.” One person has even listed a private “50 foot back garden” beside Victoria Park (Tower Hamlets) for £45 a month for a budding planter to snap up.

In September 2020, Imperial College London found there was an extreme shortage of allotments in the capital, with researchers finding: “The mental, physical and community benefits of allotment gardening are invaluable to city dwellers, but allotments are in short supply in London.

Read the complete article here.