As food prices remain stubbornly high, reflecting in part the cost of transporting produce from across the UK and abroad, growing your own fruit and vegetables at home must seem a very sensible option.
There has also been a growing trend of young adults developing a keen interest in horticulture. During the recent coronavirus lockdown, social media saw a massive boom of ‘green-fingered’ profiles being created on sites such as Instagram and TikTok. Promoting the home-growing can also help reduce global waste, plastic pollution and carbon emissions.
However, many UK residents do not have access to a garden suitable for such activity and recent newspaper headlines have highlighted the outrageously long waiting lists for garden allotments around the UK.
Another way
There may, however, be a way of digging up a garden space.
Founded this year, PlotSpot is an online service dedicated to enabling more home-growing. It matches people who have unused growing space with those seeking room to grow. It’s also a social platform for green-fingered people to connect collaborate and inspire.
According to a recent investigation by Greenpeace UK, over 175,000 UK residents are on the lists for council-allocated growing space, and it takes three years on average to be granted a space, although some have had to wait as long as 15 years in London.
Through Freedom of Information requests the environmental group also found that waiting lists in England have been doubling in length since 2011.
PlotSpot thinks it is well-positioned to alleviate some of that demand and has already built strong foundations and a large community in the short time since the initiative was launched.
Positive change
Aaron Nicholas, managing director of PlotSpot commented: “We exist to promote positive change. We want to inspire a new wave of growers who are passionate about the environment and eager to learn about the abundance of nature.”
A former IT project manager, 37-year-old Nicholas now co-manages an orchard/allotment in South Wales, growing his fruit, vegetables and flowers whilst respecting the area's natural biodiversity.
In February 2022, Nicholas suffered a cardiac arrest, which encouraged him to move his family out of the busy city and relocate to more rural surroundings. However, in moving to Wales the family found itself without a garden for the first time.
“It was the generosity of the local community that quickly provided a solution to this - local residents offering to share growing space with us in return for assistance. And just like that, the idea of PlotSpot was born!” Nicholas noted.
“Our ultimate goal is to bring together home-growers, farms, farm shops and local suppliers making it easier than ever for people to access locally sourced, sustainable produce,” the PlotSpot MD added.
If you are looking for space to grow, interested in joining their community or hosting a plot, you can find full details on the PlotSpot website: www.plotspot.co.uk.