Landshare from River Cottage and Channel 4

Remember that telly-related thing I was talking about, well it’s called Landshare and it’s being developed by the people that brought us Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage TV series.

If you want to swopaplot, then go there – it’s going to be big, people!

You can register in one or more of the following categories:

• Grower (I want to grow my own food)
• Landowner (I have land I can make available for growing food)
• Land-spotter (I know of some land which may be useable)
• Facilitator (I’d like to support elderly/other Landsharers who need help locally)

You can also sign up via Channel 4’s Landshare site

Happy Landsharing!

Nice telly people

Well that was interesting. I just had a meeting with the nice telly people. I can’t tell you what they’re up to, but it all could be happening rather soon, and it’s all pretty exciting stuff. Watch this space… there’s more to come…

Swopaplot – or swapaplot – in G2

Oh, blimey, we’ve been namechecked in today’s Guardian, and I’ve not posted anything here for NEARLY A YEAR. Help!

And I only found out because someone who’s developing a TV project about garden sharing and read the Guardian piece just emailed me about it.

I still think this is a great idea, but I’ve been into other things. Does anyone fancy getting involved? This might suddenly become popular… (I knew I was onto something…)

Wanted – swopaplot taker-on-er

I briefly met a very nice lady who used to be on the telly last night at a Soil Association lecture kindly given by my favourite prophet of doom. “What a brilliant idea!” she said when she heard of Swopaplot.

Ah yes Anna, a brilliant idea, but sadly one I can’t commit to taking forward, on account of having decided not to move to Carshalton after all, but rather to see if those rather lovely people in the New Zealand immigration service wouldn’t rather have us instead. Hmm… Wallington or Wellington? What’s in a vowel? Tough choice. Not that I’m knocking Wallington mind. It’s where my daughter first ate fried chicken.

But where was I? Oh yes, as I’m hoping to leg it off to the other hemisphere I was hoping that there might be someone out there interested in developing the Swopaplot project. Taking it forward. You know, a successor, who might, well, succeed. Let me know if you’re interested.

If you just fancy sticking your toe in the Swopaplot pond, then perhaps you’d consider taking on the job of moderator for this site? That way at least that won’t get neglected.

Any offers?

Draft contracts on the way

Lovely lawyer Mr X is putting together an easy-to-use contract to help gardeners and garden owners get clear what they’re agreeing to in a swopaplot swop. We should be able to share it with you soon.

Sorry for not posting for a while. Had a lot of family stuff on – hoping to trade our flat up for a house – perhaps even with a garden…

Welcome Freecyclers? Or, er, not.

I was hoping we might be welcoming a few London Freecyclers to this site, as I posted a comment on the London Freecycle group this evening offering Swopaplot’s services. I’d been thinking the motives of Swopaplot and Freecycle were mutually compatible, and that Freecyclers might welcome the invitation to come and participate in Swopaplot…

But it seems that an overzealous moderator has immediately banned me from Freecycle without explanation, despite Freecycle’s stated “two strikes and you’re out” policy. I had hoped I wasn’t too badly in breach of the Freecycle house rules, but they don’t appear to have seen it that way. My wife just told me I should probably have posted it in the Freecycle Cafe, not the main posting list, as it was a bit off topic. They may have objected to the post as Swopaplot might count as “trading”, which isn’t allowed within the bounds of Freecycle. On reflection perhaps that is the case, although what was being offered was the opportunity to get involved in setting up a free service, not any specific trade.

Oops. It seems I’ve upset somebody. Sorry folks. Maybe I’m just being soft, but perhaps rejecting the propsed post with a short but polite email and a referral back to the terms of Freecycle might have seemed a more civilised thing to do, rather than a summary total ban after one attempted, enthusiastic if possibly ill-judged post; after all, wasn’t it enthusiasm that got Freecycle started in the first place? And there I was thinking people were allowed to make mistakes occasionally.

As Jack Nicholson once said just before the Martians got him, why can’t we all just get along?

In spite of this little disagreement, I would heartily recommend Freecycle to anyone who wants to get rid of any physical stuff that might otherwise end up in landfill. Anyone with any old gardening equipment that’s no longer needed, Freecycle’s your place. (And if you’re after any old used tools etc you might be able to help somebody out and pick some up there too – but be sure to offer something to the community first – otherwise you might just get yourself banned…)

Schools vs allotments

OK, I’m delighted that Sutton Council are prioritising giving local kids the best educational facilities they can, but should this be at the expense of greatly-valued allotments? Or a popular ecological community project?

Now I’m not always one to jump on local paper nimby bandwagons, but on this occasion I’m right behind the Sutton Guardian’s Save Our Lavendar campaign.

New LONG strapline

I’ve had some feedback that people were getting a bit confused about the purpose of this site – and thinking about it the tagline “Helping London grow a little greener” wasn’t hugely specific was it? – so now we’ve got this instead:

a blog about building a website to help Londoners with underused gardens and Londoners who’d love to dig them to get together to share their time and space to help London grow a little bit greener

Phew. Can you say that without taking a breath? Hmm. Just about. I think it sums things up in 40 words or less. Doesn’t it? Maybe. If you think you can do any better please let me know!

(I quite like “Really digging other people’s gardens” as a short version though.)

Style update

I’ve made some further changes to the blog stylesheet to incorporate the new logo colours. Plenty more tweaking where that came from of course, but another little step in the right direction. (Or did you prefer the “Lloyds TSB” look?)

The logo develops

Latest version of the logo! arrived from Nicky!:

Oo I do like the colours and the rounder O in SWOP. Just need to tidy up the O in PLOT and I think we’re sorted. But feel free to disagree!