About Me (and my allotment!)

Hello, I’m Jack, and I have a passion for food and gardening. I live and work in the Surrey area, where I manage a 36-square-meter polyculture-style allotment. This space not only provides a habitat for various wildlife but also yields an impressive array of fruits, vegetables, and flowers. With two years of experience working alongside a renowned local garden designer, I have honed my planting and maintenance skills. I specialize in transforming unused, overgrown, or plain gardens and balconies into productive spaces that offer educational benefits, enhance taste, and save costs, especially given our unpredictable climate. As the UK imports over 60% of its food, my mission is to help you grow your own, fostering self-sufficiency and sustainability.

My allotment, viewed from the front. On the right is a herb garden with several herbs, and on the left is a strawberry tower and pollinator plants. The central veg bed features 2 varieties of potatoes, broad beans, lettuce, spring onions, French and dwarf beans, peas, tomatoes, radish, beetroot and chard. Behind this are a wildlife pond and flower section, with a fruit garden and more flowers at the back.

The back of my allotment features juicy golden raspberry canes, three distinct varieties of rhubarb, six dwarf fruit trees, deliciously sweet blackcurrant bushes, and a huge variety of flowers that attract bees, butterflies, and birds. Over 30 different flower species bring colour and vibrancy from March until the first frosts.

This is a typical weekly harvest from a small section of the allotment bed in the heat of summer—imagine the abundance if the entire space were dedicated solely to food! The harvest includes tomatoes, celery, courgettes, carrots, chard, melons, cucumbers, beetroots, spring onions, and runner beans.