Little green-fingers could be big business for St John's School

Friday 24 January 2014

A new allotment scheme could produce some budding entrepreneurs of the future, as primary school children join the Island's allotment craze.

The school has taken on the lease of a 120-square metre patch at the new St John’s Community Allotment Scheme. Teacher James Matthews said: “The allotment allows us to not only learn all about the importance of growing your own food, but also to help us learn some entrepreneurial skills as we hope to sell our own grown veg at school. We’d love this allotment to become very much part of our community.”

The new curriculum has a big emphasis on food and nutrition - making sure children have an understanding of the basic principles of a healthy and varied diet.

The school has a ‘Big Sow’ event planned for March when the plot becomes available, so it won’t be long before the children are getting their hands dirty, learning all about where their food comes from and are cooking up what they have grown themselves.

The Jersey Allotments & Leisure Gardening Association (JALGA) created their flagship site at Les Creux in 2010 and has been championing community allotments in the Island ever since. It has a site in St Helier near Surville cemetery on the outskirts of town and it has now taken on a nine-year lease of the field in St John’s.  The parish school will have one of 26 plots, in a field behind the village which will also have 3 raised beds for disabled islanders.

The Association’s plots are in big demand, JALGA currently has 600 islanders on its waiting list.

Chairman of the Committee of Trustees for JALGA Jeff Hathaway said: “Allotments are nothing new but they are to Jersey. It’s a leisure pastime, it’s healthy plus we have a heritage of growing. The site in John will belong to the Parish, they are the landlord and it will very much be a parish asset.”

The history of allotments in the UK goes back 400 years to the Enclosure Acts when the poor were allotted a portion of land. The idea stuck and by the First World War 1.5 million plots were established around the country.

Part of Hyde Park was turned into allotments during the Second World War to help feed the people of London.

There are allotments all over the world but the largest concentration is in Germany where they even have allotment retreats where people can go for a weekend away in the countryside.