You might think allotment people are only green-fingered, but I think they’re a bit tin-fingered as well.

Giles Turnbull has a website on the internet and sometimes he posts pictures. The other day he had a nice post of observations and pictures from allotments. I’m not exactly sure of the translation misalignment, but it looks to be about the same thing as what I would call a community garden here in Northern California. Giles is also a well known internet person and that stuff is good too.1

Screenshot of the gilest.org post “Allotment engineering,” showing rows of upturned plastic bottles used as cloches over young plants in an allotment bed.

So I had a look around the community garden where my wife has a plot and made a few pictures. This survey is only a quarter of the plots. We’re much later in the growing season than Giles’ area, but the plants haven’t blocked things up that much yet.

A community garden plot enclosed in a wire-mesh fence, with tall vertical wooden stakes and strings rising up to support tomato plants.
Standard vertical trellis.
A garden bed framed by tall wooden posts with horizontal wood cross-pieces lashed across them, forming a flat lattice over the soil.
Intentional horizontal trellis.
A raised bed of squash and seedlings under a flat trellis improvised from scrap wood and broken stakes laid across a wooden frame.
Improvised horizontal trelliswork.

I suspect Giles is making a bit of a joke by calling it “engineering” and I don’t mind that at all. Properly, this is jury rigging, though “vernacular” could conceivably be stretched to include this sort of improvised construction. That led me to jugaad and I love it, so much invention and freedom and creativity! We need more of this. Well, I do.

A tall wood-and-wire fence framing the gate of a community garden plot, with green hills visible in the background.
I liked this gate.
A community garden plot ringed by a tall wood-and-wire fence, with potted geraniums along the outside and hoop covers over rows of plants inside.
An eclectic fence.

It’s a little hard to see in this next one but that is a writing desk there in the middle. I like to imagine it is getting good use early every morning, supporting an intrepid author putting in the work. The plants encroach a little more every morning and have to be shoo’d off the writing area now and then, the rascals.

A crowded garden plot full of rebar stakes, wire cages, and irrigation hose, with a repurposed wooden desk standing in among the plants.
The writer's garden.

As I was wrapping up I noticed this tool had been assembled from some left over parts too. Or maybe it’s a “proper”2 tool that I just haven’t had the pleasure of yet.

A garden hoe with a thick, hand-shaped wooden handle resting across the seat of a weathered white plastic chair beside a garden bed.
The engineering isn't limited only to infrastructure. Tools can get vernacular treatment too!

I too believe that I will post some updates now and again as I scout more of the plots and see what else I see. There is still the other three quarters of the plots, just in this one community garden. Send your observations to Giles, or me too. Vernacular engineering is fun!

jg

comments

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-Jeff E.:

Dude, your blog is great! I keep meaning to comment and then there’s no comment spot!

I’ve always meant to look up “allotment” so I finally got around to it and it’s almost the same as a community garden except 1) the plots are 250sqm (half plots are sometimes available in modern times) 2) they’re required by law so you generally have inherited rights to an allotment 3) because of the large size and the long-term rights people do build more “engineered” things like sheds and cold frames.

Also, I thought it was jerry-rigged: MW on jerry-built vs jury-rigged.

I learned more than I do from the usual 10,000 word substack. Why did substack get so wordy compared to blogs of old.

footnotes

  1. I’m mostly there for the pictures, I’m a sucker for good pictures of regular stuff. ↩︎

  2. “Proper”, heh, all this stuff is in some way made up to begin with. It might get refined over years, generations, or eons, but let’s not forget where it all came from. ↩︎