Transition Town Wellington’s sustainable food group aims to make Wellington more sustainable in its food supply. As about 50 per cent of total world global greenhouse gas emissions come from industrial agriculture, localising food supply and moving away from an increasingly fragile industrialised system to an organic, smaller scale system is essential to tackle climate change.

Allotments are a great way of enabling more people to get involved in making this a reality and their potential for stabilising our food security cannot be underestimated. We believe everyone should have access to one, and our efforts to encourage and teach new gardeners to grow vegetables will be in vain if people do not have the space to grow.

So we are campaigning from as many angles as we can with the aim of connecting potential growers to the land. We have created a list of all the allotment sites in Taunton Deane. WWN readers can find the list on our website, ttw.org.uk/allotments and our Facebook page https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2996323463780997&id=940035256076505.

It contains details of how to get on a waiting list, along with locations, how big the site is and list length, so you can judge which list will be best for you to join.

We are also trying to influence allotment strategy at a higher level – Somerset West and Taunton Council is re-writing its policy at the moment, which requires new housing developers to add allotments to their plans. We hope to help make this better, to show ‘evidence of need’, so more plots per number of houses are provided, plus trying to make it more watertight to ensure they actually happen.

Please help us by answering our survey, if you are thinking about getting an allotment yourself, to show what size of plot you would like and how you would use it. It will only take three or four minutes and the information is provided anonymously. Visit https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/5NF52FY 

We are now working on compiling a list of community gardening projects for Taunton Deane, so if you need help and encouragement to start growing vegetables, or would like to work as a team, you will know where to start looking. If you know of a community food-growing project, of any size or type, please let us know on [email protected]

HELEN GILLINGHAM

Transition Town Wellington