Everyone, it seems, now loves an allotment. So much so that one new development of flats in London is using nearby allotments as a selling point.
Around the country there are 13,000 people on five or ten year waiting lists for the 300,000 existing plots. There's even a newly established Allotment Regeneration Initiative, which provides grants to reclaim derelict sites. And it is women who are spearheading the Grow Your Own movement.
In Sheffield, proud allotment holder and singer/songwriter Sally Goldsmith spent much of last year trailing round allotments talking to the people she found there. The result is a CD and touring show called simply Plotters, which celebrates life on the vegetable patch. Clare Jenkins accompanied her up the garden path in Sheffield.
