Welcome to episode 19 of the Kitchen Garden Podcast. Despite some initial reservations, allotment champion Steve Neal recounts the success of opening up an allotment site in Somerset to the National Garden Scheme.

As an allotment association you get used to receiving a regular dose of unsolicited advice on how things could be done better or differently. It goes with the territory, as they say, but this comment from one of our own members made us momentarily pause in our tracks.

Had we really grown a little bit above ourselves, opening our allotments alongside some formal gardens, belonging to fairly grand houses or old rectories, as part of the National Garden Scheme (NGS)? Iford manor, Bath Priory Hotel, Corsham Court, Algars Manor, Dyrham Park, Muriel Jones Allotment Fields – Frome. It doesn’t take much to spot the odd one out on the list. And any one man or woman with a dog can, and often does, wander down the allotments any old day and has a nose around, without having to fork out £4.50 for the

privilege. A vision of potential public humiliation grew in the collective mind of the committee.

The bunting all out for an open day where no one turned up, and a pile of unsold cake drying out under the gazebo.

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