CULTIVATE AND CONNECT

Gardeners have always enjoyed comparing growing stories and sharing advice. Hannah Reid looks at the social media trends in gardening and how it cultivates friendships

- Hannah Reid

Allotments in the UK have been around since the 1500s. Under Elizabeth I, common land was used by people for growing food, keeping animals and creating a sense of community. Allotment gardens as we know them now really took hold in the 1840s. Allotment gardening, for me, took off many decades later, in 2019. Despite the centuries between them, the conversations between gardeners and the communities that have been built on allotment plots will have been growing the whole time.

Gardening has always brought people together in many ways, whether that’s just by being outdoors and having a conversation over the fence with a neighbour, sharing gardening advice and knowledge or swapping seeds, produce or preservings. Kitchen gardens and allotments are feeding our communities in more ways than one – they’re feeding community spirit too and bringing people together.

When I decided to take on an allotment plot, I created an Instagram account as a way of recording the gardening journey I was on and so that I would have points of reference to look back on in years to come – a sort of gardening journal. I started to search for gardening accounts to take inspiration from and I was blown away by the sheer volume of gardening accounts and content online. Scrolling through the content of garden design ideas, beautiful bountiful harvests, colourful home-picked flower bouquets and greenhouses packed with fresh produce, I was excited by the potential straight away. I’d gleaned so many ideas from gardeners I’d never met. Ideas were all I had at the time. At that point, my allotment was covered in black plastic and hadn’t been cultivated for a few years.