'Growing is in our DNA, what we're designed to do. It helps us make sense of things': Waiting for an allotment in Belfast

The sun appeared in Belfast yesterday. First warmth of Spring and all the men wore shorts. Belfast men wear shorts year round, but yesterday was special. Yesterday, the shorts served an actual purpose. I don’t wear shorts — never had the legs for them — so I enjoyed the sunshine in my own way. I walked up to the allotments, just for a peek through the gates.

There’s a romance to allotments. A purple Metroland fancy, Betjeman style. I think they are best appreciated on summer afternoons, on weekdays, in that pause between lunch and the schools letting out. You can peer through the chain link fence, over buddleia and rusting nettles. Grey sheds, spaced like old men in post office queues. Hosepipes bleaching in the sun. Files of potatoes, earthed up by the book, and tomatoes in sweaty little greenhouses. That one plot gone to couch grass, indicating sudden death or promotion at work.

I put my name down for an allotment three years ago. The way things are, I’ll be extremely lucky to get my hands dirty this decade. Belfast has 281 plots spread over seven sites. It isn’t much for a population of 350,000, and demand is building all the time. Last year, the city council produced a report on allotment provision. As of March 2025, there were 964 people waiting for a plot.

‘Our current waiting list is over a thousand people, and that’s really telling in its own way,’ says Councillor Ruth Brooks, deputy chair of Belfast City Council’s People and Communities Committee. The attractions are obvious: ‘The growing and nourishing of things, learning from what you’ve done, how you could potentially do it better. It’s fascinating — and very, very good for people’s mental health.’

In an ideal world, new allotments would be opening up on every scrap of brownfield the city has to offer. Sadly, reality intrudes. People need places to live, and new housing naturally takes priority in a city where rent prices have gone up by 53% in the past 5 years. For now, the council has opened community gardens and raised money to green the city’s alleyways. But it isn’t quite like having your own plot, the sense of stewardship and commitment that comes from working the same patch of earth year after year.

The terraced Victorian houses that form a large part of Belfast’s housing stock don’t generally have back gardens. Outside space is often limited to a small yard. As Cllr Brooks puts it, ‘you’ve usually just enough room to put two bins in and open the back gate’. I’m lucky enough to have space for a tiny bench next to my bins. But I have to keep my legs tucked in, and there’s no chance of serious veg growing. For the moment, I’ve acquired the sad habit of ordering seed catalogues and leafing through them during off moments — waiting for the kettle to boil, or on the loo.

No one really knows why so many people now want an allotment. The pandemic must have something to do with it. And I wonder if there’s a broader realisation that all the stuff that’s supposed to entertain us these days is really incredibly boring. Better to go outside and have a companionably gloomy chat about onion fly.

Mike Farrell, chairman of The National Allotment Society, has seen great changes. Allotments are no longer the preserve of ‘old fuddy-duddies of a certain type.’ That pleases him. He has his own theories about growing. It’s in our DNA, what we’re designed to do. It helps us to make sense of things.

The passage of time is a big one. When I suggest that allotments are actually clocks, Farrell agrees enthusiastically. He’d like to see allotments used to educate young children. All of life is there, after all. There’s no better place to learn about forward planning, commitment and adaptability, or how to accept failure. Allotments teach resilience.

I was struck, when reading Belfast City Council’s allotment report, by the mention of ‘pressures upon food security.’ Resilience seems increasingly important in this area, too. Farrell calmly observes that there have been periods of our recent history when we have had to grow our own food for reasons beyond satisfaction and taste. You’re not going to feed a family from an allotment alone, but you can ensure a supply of fresh fruit and vegetables that don’t have to cross troubled waters to reach your plate.

Anyway, it’s the waiting game for me. Apparently more than 200 people have their names down for a plot at my local allotment site. That’s all right — patience is a horticultural virtue. And there are small projects I could be getting on with. I might replace my bench with a tub of potatoes this summer. A dash of green will show the bins off to their best advantage.