Charlton Kings Parish Council proudly supports local food growing and community wellbeing through its five allotment sites — Little Croft, Croft ATC, Sappercombe, Ryeworth, and Haver — with over 250 plots available to residents.

Our thriving allotment community in the Parish has been working hard this year! Plot holders have been growing some amazing fruit, vegetables and cut flowers, and we have been increasing our commitment to deliver some extra projects that should impact the wider community.

These are some of the things we have been up to…

With an ever-increasing enthusiasm for making our allotments as biodiverse as we can, the Parish Council - alongside our site representatives - are in the process of developing communal plots on each site, dedicated to wildlife. Each plot will be slightly different, paying homage to the characteristics of it's location, the needs of the tenants on the site, the condition of the current plot, and of course the individuality of our site reps!

We have scope to include shaded seating areas, rainwater capture stations, community fruit trees, hibernaculums, bird boxes, dead hedges, wildflowers and woodchip piles.

Plot holders on each site will have the opportunity to volunteer their time to help manage these spaces and make suggestions to their site reps or the GSO as to what they would like to see on their community plot.

A huge thank you to Sarah Payne - our site rep for Haver and Ryeworth - who has pioneered one of these spaces on Haver that is thriving! It has given us the blueprint to create more of these social spaces to be enjoyed by the tenants and their families.

Matt Lawton, our GSO, and Councillor Tim Gilbert have completed the building of a Rainwater Capture Station on Croft ATC! This is an exciting first move towards a more sustainable water strategy for the allotments as whole. It will provide 1000 litres of water when full and will be available to anyone who wishes to use it. Grants and funding should be available in the future with a big plan to have these stations on every site in the Parish. We're hoping this project will inspire you all – allotment tenant or not - to take advantage of this amazing resource that falls from the sky!

A huge thank you to Sarah Trimarco, our site rep of Croft ATC, for coming up with this wonderful idea to collect rainwater and for lending part of her plot for this project.

Many of our plot holders are helping to develop more diverse sites for wildlife with plenty of wildflowers for insects, seed heads for birds, rough and untidy areas left alone to encourage slow worms and ponds for amphibians. As well as this, a strong conviction by many of our plot holders to garden organically, make their own compost and explore non-chemical options for weed control. This all plays a part in essentially creating little nature havens across the Parish. There is always more we can be doing on our sites, but with enough enthusiasm for attracting wildlife – not simply growing cabbages – we are slowly changing the fabric of what an allotment can be for.

Several talks and events have taken place this year including a seedling and plant swap at the community allotment at Sappercombe back in May, an allotment tour of Haver and Ryeworth in June led by our amazing site rep Michelle Kirby, a summer BBQ on Ryeworth, a talk on how to make jams and preserves in September and a talk on composting and soil health, again on the community allotment at Sappercombe. These talks and events all add to the diversity of activities taking place across our sites. Our 2 sites reps at Sappercombe and Little Croft very kindly put in their own time to help supervise clearing rubbish off the sites.

If you have any suggestions as to what talks or events you would like to see, or if you'd like to organise one yourself, please contact Matt at gso@charltonkingsparishcouncil.gov.uk

Finally, a huge thank you to our amazing site reps who volunteer their time to provide a valuable resource to plot holders as a point of contact and source of expertise. They work tirelessly to maintain their respective sites, as well as working to make improvements.