Town or Country?

[alan refail]

I was born and brought up in the country. My family grew vegetables and fruit and kept hens. Plenty of spare produce came home from the “big house” where my grandfather worked as chauffeur and part-time gardener. Not unusual for the war years, I know. I then moved to the city where I lived for forty years and for half of that time grew my own fruit and vegetables. For the last ten years I have lived in the countryside again, still growing, keeping hens and ducks – going back to my roots in a way.

The reason for the biographical bit is this. When I was growing in the city - and I’m talking 1980’s and ‘90’s - there was a thriving allotment scene and as many people as could were keen to grow their own food. I recall one of my fellow gardeners saying that, in his opinion, the future of home growing, especially organic, was in the towns and cities and not in the countryside. When I moved to the countryside I began to think he was right. In our small village (200 population) only two or three of us grow anything edible (the exception being tomatoes, which quite a few grow), and nobody now keeps poultry, though almost all the local people who buy our eggs claim their parents or grandparents had hens/ducks.

Maybe this is just something typical of North-West Wales – or is it true elsewhere that the future of growing and poultry-keeping is in the urban areas? What’s your experience?

Alan

[Weed]

...or is it that most of the Country dwellers work in the Cities and spend all their non-working time either commuting or socialising?

[oldherbaceous]

I think Weed has hit the nail on the head, in our village a lot of the people work in the city, they like to live in country, but they don't like the country life, if you see what i mean.

I was conceived in Wales, born in Surrey, and then lived here all my life, so have seen a few changes in the growing of veg.

I did hear somewhere that the Welsh grow less veg than most.

[Clive.]

Hello Alan,

I have only ever lived in one house at the edge of a small Lincolnshire market town...I would dread moving house...it would need a mighty big skip.. with accumulated "junk" from several hobbies.!!

We have the back garden given over totally to fruit/veg..whilst the front lawn, flower and shrub garden is more or less as designed by Amateur Gardening magazines??,..garden design service back in the late 1950s.?

The property south has a large front garden of gravel car parking...I do applaude our neighbour a retired nursery owner, who saved the removed top soil to make a banked area for shrubs etc rather than having the lovely soil carted away. This front garden was once a formal lawn area with vegetables to the rear when in previous ownership.
(I have witnessed elsewhere locally..thick cut turves/soil going into sacks for the tip )

Further south.. a once long veg' garden is now all lawn....the next, former big house estate cottages have both sprouted bungalows in their once large gardens.

..North, now home to 3 bungalows (lawned, flower and shrub, wild garden respectively) this was once a smallholders vegetable patch...and whilst bungalow construction was underway over several years it was the home to my second ever Own vegetable patch.

There is a very active town allotment site which is sited between the town and a now adjoining village. There is another smaller site behind the Catholic Church.

..but the conclusion I draw is that in our immediate locality, whilst there are a few keen growers of vegetables the majority don't...wereas thinking back only 10 or 15 years years many gardens in our vicinity had a certain amount of vegetable area.

That all seems very negative ..however I did notice on Saturday that the seed rack in our local supermarket was nearly empty of vegetable seeds so perhaps my theory and my aerial surveilance using Google map is wrong

..and if my neighbours read the forum then it perhaps may not be Badgers in my Pea row...

Clive.

[Malk]

I grew up in a town and now live in a city. My mum grew vegetables when I was a kid and her dad did the same in a town. Two of her siblings have moved out into the country and have horses and keep bees. I'd love to live in the country/ small village, for the whole social life as well as style of living.

My dad's side of the family were all farmers, but only one of his uncles and his daughter have continued on with this. None of the others even have veg patches as far as I know.

Maybe it's a grass greener thing?

[lizzie]

Maybe Alan has a point. The allotment scene in Liverpool is very much alive and kicking, with many sites having long waiting lists for plots.

I was born and raised in this city and would move with very little notice to the countryside. I wouldn't need to be asked twice. While I was growing up family holidays revolved around the countryside and days out were to the countryside. My Dad would take us onto moors, along clifftops, into forests, anywhere there was trees, flowers, animals and very few people. Grock used to come with us and she now takes her Grocklets to the places we went as kids.

I don't know why, but i'm much more at home in the countryside and sometimes find the city overwhelming. The noise, the dirt, the clutter, the fact I live on a street with 113 other families, in a row of streets that all have 113 families. I know the countryside can be noisy too, but I know which I would choose. I always feel too "crushed" as though I have no room to move in the city.

[Weed]

I think if the truth were known we would ALL like to live in a 'cottage in the country' with the obligatory roses around the door.

Unfortuately I couldn't afford to move to the country plus my business revolves around the outskirts of the south side of the city....I would then become one of the commuting 'landed gentry'

My Governor doesn't drive so there would be transport considerations especially if my 'use by date' suddenly arrived.

I suppose my allotment fills a slight gap and I can still dream

[Monika]

I grew up in Czechoslovakia and East Germany and, although we lived in a town, my family always grew vegetables (if we hadn't, we might not have survived the post-war period - see Giles MacDonogh's recent book "After the Reich"), so to me it's sort of second nature. Since then, I have gardened a small patch next to the river Lea in very rural Hertfordshire, on the slopes of Ilkley Moor (baht 'at), next to a busy railway line in a West Yorkshire town and now surrounded by fields with lapwings, curlews and oystercatchers in the Yorkshire Dales. Strangely, the most productive allotment was the the one in town because the soil was beautiful and, as the place was busy with people and overlooked, we had no wildlife problems like rabbits, jackdaws and partridges from which we suffer now, in our isolated spot!

[lizzie]

I recently discovered whilst doing my family tree that at least 3 generations of the family, on my dads side, came from the North Riding (I think) between Whitby Bay and Scarborough. Maybe my need for open moorland and the sea is in the genes.

Maybe that could be a whole new area of discussion.

[alan refail]

Many thanks for your interesting views so far. It's beginning to look as if growing for food in the country is going out of fashion - assuming, that is, that it was ever popular in some areas.

OH said; "I did hear somewhere that the Welsh grow less veg than most."

I think you may be right. Welsh traditional cooking contains relatively few vegetable dishes, apart, of course, from Leeks, Potatoes and Laver (in the South). A lot of Welsh "poverty cooking" was based on oatmeal and buttermilk or water. What do the other Welsh members of the forum think?

When I have lived in France and Italy, I have always noticed that where people had a bit of land - and that meant in the countryside - they always grew vegetables. In fact they are enormously surprised that the same does not happen here.

Any more ideas to add to the discussion will be very welcome.

Cofion gorau - regards

Alan

[richard p]

recently i happened to see a 1930's arial photo of our local small town, it clearly showed the council estate with rows of veg in every back garden, id lay a small wager that their isnt a veg patch in any of them now, its all patios and decking. its all the bbq lifestyle thing and growing anything is too much like work. its easier to buy the "food" when youre picking up the tinnies.

[TonyF]

I'm a Londoner, lived there for the better part of 58 years with one or two small excursions to semi-rural areas for work. Though I did have a garden and an allotment, I had to give up the latter because of pressures of work.

Now I live in a rural area of SW France, complete change in lifestyle, really farming/rural community where GYO is just part of the majority of local's life styles tho only for a few Brits who seem to want to export the 'mode Anglais' to France.

Of course I miss some of the benefits of London but only the art stuff.

Town or country - no contest for me now, I have a huge garden, help others with their gardens, grow my own without having to transport tools etc to an allotment, has to be country.

[Primrose]

I suppose I'm an "Urbaner" really. Our village is on the edge of some larger towns but we have fair amount of open space nearby. I think one of the reasons why so few people grow vegetables or keep poultry in their gardens these days is the increasingly small size of houses and their gardens, as well as shortage of time. Also, many newer properties these days have restrictive covenants forbidding the keeping of poultry in their gardens (as ours does, and our house is 30 years old !). With more disposable income and less time available with both partners working, it's easier and less time consuming to buy vegetables from supermarkets. But there does also seem to be a growing trend for individuals to get back to their earier "self sufficient" roots which explains the unsatisfying demand for more allotments. As I grow older, I appreciate the value of being able to walk to local shops, library & doctors, but I also don't want to live surrounded by houses, concrete and the hustle and noise of others. So I'm in the uncomfortable position of sitting with one leg on each side of the fence when it comes to location. Having said that, I have always grown as many of own own veggies as possible, even when our first "pocket handkerchief" garden only allowed a few tomatoes & climbing beans in its tiny borders. Just think: If everybody grew even the smallest amount of food in their gardens, how much our food imports bill & food miles would be reduced by. And if we were ever unfortunate enough to find ourselves in another World War /"Dig For Victory" situation, I wonder how much food this country would be able to produce, considering how many thousands of acres we have concreted over since the last World War.

[Tigger]

I was brought up in the town and we didn't grow anything at home - most of the garden was slabbed. I don't recall any of my family showing any interest in gardening.

I've spent all my adult life in the country and the last 23 years in a hamlet with no shop or public transport. Most of us here grow something and many have substantial vegetable and fruit gardens. Several folk also keep a few hens or ducks and there's still the odd house cow around, or goats. The rest tend to be horse lovers. There's only a handful that keep only a flower garden and even most of those have a greenhouse with tomatoes and cucumbers.

[jopsy]

i was born and brought up in manchester(WORSLEY)-my grandad grew all his own fruit n veg-he lived a few miles away(SWINTON)
my other grandad lives in jarrow he still grows quite a bit, hes in his 80's
i lived in the lakes(AMBLESIDE) as a student and didnt do anything with gardens as i didnt have one
i moved down to devon, my first house(BRIXHAM) i grew plants in pots as i only had a concrete slab yard
our second house(ILSINGTON/HAYTOR)where we currently live had a large patch with nothing but soil. we sorted it our planted it up and have been known to grow quite a bit-but still at the early stages!