Figure 39.The Practical Gardener
“Those like me, who have done this before and know how it works, do that. They harvest all year because they have the knowledge, they have it planned out, and know when things will be ready to harvest and therefore have a supply of vegetables all year. That’s what the plot is for. That’s why I utilise the whole plot. I don’t go in for all these divisions. It, well, it just wastes the growing area.... You have to have a path and so, I put that in along the edge here, but everything else gets tilled ... the older men, like myself, they till every bit of the plot. Every bit is used, every bit you can grow on, you use it to grow”
Bill. Practical Gardener: Dublin. Feb, 2013 Practical gardeners are motivated by self-provision, food production, and inter-generational connections to UA. They generally comprise older men and women from working class backgrounds, who possess an ‘agrarian habitus’, where ‘habitus’ according to Bourdieu (1977), refers to a system of internalised structures strongly shaped by our earlier lives which generates practice. The Practical gardener sees the allotment landscape as functional, for the purpose of growing food and self-provision. They express concerns over the sources and content of food, over changes in food production practices, and express an explicit desire to reinvigorate ‘traditional’ methods of cultivation, knowledge and practice into the contemporary urban metropolis.
Bill, a native of Dublin, has been growing his own food since early childhood. As a man in his mid-seventies, he is a keen and avid allotment gardener who acquired his passion, knowledge and cultivation skills from his father as he tended the family plot in the city as
96 a young child. However, as urbanisation began to swallow up residual pieces of land for urban development, their investment came to an abrupt end, forcing them to continue practice in a small corner of their back garden. Despite their displacement, Bill actively pursued his passion for growing vegetables and made various adaptations to his home to accommodate his passion for food cultivation down through the years. As news of the provision of allotments by his local council emerged (some six years ago), Bill actively pursued a plot and became one of the first members to secure a plot in the hinterlands. He is motivated by his desire to cultivate food, his desire to maintain ‘traditional’ methods of cultivation and sees the allotment as functional, for the purpose of growing food and self-provision.
“I want to be able to grow my own food that’s why. I used to grow my vegetables at home and everything I learned, I learned from my father. Because he, he had a system, as he used to say, you can’t learn it out of a book. If someone hands you a plant, or a leaf, you have to know what it is. The only way to learn is to garden. You have to know what you’re doing. You have to know when to transplant and so-forth and that’s, well, that comes with years of experience. And, the older men, that’s Peter and Dick, they’re older men and they’re like myself, they till every bit of the plot. Every bit is used, every bit you can grow
on, you use it to grow. … you have to use the whole space, that’s what it’s for”
Bill. Practical Gardener: Dublin. 2013 Jim has also been growing vegetables for over 29 years. A native of the South East, Jim spent his working life in Dublin as a gardener in a stately-home on the periphery of the city. Like Bill, Jim possesses inter-generational connections to UA, expresses concerns over the sources and content of food, and is motivated by his desire to produce his own food, and know its source.
“knowin where the stuff is comin from , sure ya know what your eatin. The best thing is that you know what you’re growin, your own is, and you’re sure it’s safe … sure ‘tis the best. No muck in it. The stuff you get now is muck, pure muck. Full of water. People now don’t know what they’re eatin. This, it’s the proper stuff and it won’t cost you a fortune like the stuff in the shops. That’s why. Years ago, sure everyone worked on a farm…me father worked all his life on a farm. That’s the way me father showed me how to do it, and I still do it that way”
Jim. Practical Gardener: Dublin. 2012
97 Practical gardeners also express their distrust in contemporary food production systems, and see UA as a means of reconnecting with ‘traditional’ forms of knowledge and food production systems.
“it’s important to teach the younger generation what we know, otherwise the old skills will die out. It’ll just be the farmers who know … more people are, well, will be brought up in cities and the old ways will fade out if we don’t share what we know. That’s important to us”
Michael. Practical Gardener: 2012 They are seen by others as keen and dedicated members of the allotment culture. They are passionate about growing food, see practice as a means of maintaining and reinvigorating
‘traditional’ methods of cultivation, and enjoy the physical nature of practice. They place a high value on practice, in terms of the land, maintaining ‘traditional’ (or what some refer to as ‘conventional’) cultivation methods (also see chapter 7, Fig 40 a & b) diffusing knowledge to others, and maintaining connections to the ‘means of production’ (Marx, 1979; Foster, 1999).
Practical gardeners’ plots are distinguishable through the methods they employ. They are well structured. They utilise the entire plot to maximise food production (also see chapter 7, Fig.126), and employ ‘traditional’ cultivation methods such as drills and lazy-beds, to grow food staples conducive with the indigenous Irish diet. They are keen to demonstrate their knowledge, and display ‘traditional’ cultivation techniques, reflected in the layout of their plots. Their desire to grow food and be self-sufficient is evident in their plot layouts where they subscribe to a code of practice which is implicit rather than explicit.
They have high standards in relation to cultivation and are intolerant and dismissive of those who don’t maintain their plots. They view others irregular attendance as a lack of commitment, a lack of knowledge, and primarily as a lack of respect for the value they themselves place on the land, on practice, and on the produce.
“That’s a thundering disgrace. Look at that turnip there coming out of the ground?....They were beautiful two months ago, now they’re a thunderin’ disgrace. Now here all along here with all these one’s are not bothered with it, or don’t know how, or just aren’t
98 bothered, they just leave that... You’d be better to give it all away rather than leave it there and useless. You couldn’t eat that now even if you wanted to, it’d be too ropey”
Jim, Practical Gardener: Dublin. 2013 While Practical gardeners cite the desire to grow food, to be self-sufficient and reinvigorate ‘traditional’ production methods as their primary motivating factors, they benefit greatly from the landscape itself. They see the allotment as affording an invaluable opportunity to interact with others and disseminate knowledge, exchange experiences and skills, which facilitates the construction of bonds of friendships and networks of support in the city. They are seen by newcomers as an invaluable source of knowledge, and as avid and dedicated members of the allotment culture. They are receptive to being part of a convivial environment where they can share their knowledge, forge friendships and generate a sense of community within their locales. Practical Gardeners therefore, perceive their plots as the next best thing to participating in the rural-cultivatable landscape, and the outdoors. They express and explicit identification with freedom and being back to the land, in a way that it represents everything the city is not.
Figure 40 (a & b) Traditional cultivation techniques
99