So what is Swopaplot then?

It seems there are actually some people reading this. Hello! And thanks for being interested.

And it looks like you may have been trawling this site looking for clues as to what’s the point of all of this. Apologies for that.

OK, now I’ve got your attention. I’ll be positing a “Swopaplot Manifesto” page in the About section very soon, but the basic idea is this:

If you live in London and have a garden you’re not making full use of, or if you know someone in that situation who’s happy for you to represent them, you’ll be able to use Swopaplot to find somebody to help you make better use of your land. You might quite like it if some of it was used to grow some vegetables, or if it was a bit tidier, or planted differently.

If you live in London and you would love to grow things but you haven’t got a garden, you’ll be able to use Swopaplot to find someone living near you who has about the right size of unused garden and would like to do the same things with it you would, or wouldn’t mind you using it at any rate, but doesn’t have the time, the ability or the inclination to do the gardening.

So the idea is to match up gardeners and gardens. There are a lot of people out there on waiting lists for allotments. There are also a lot of underutilised gardens. You’re just asking to be brought together. And swopaplot.com is where that’s going to be able to happen.

Ideas that have occurred to me so far are that we could have a “before and after” section where you’ll be able to post pictures of your gardening successes, and forum areas for sharing your experiences. There can be links to useful gardening sites and relevant online communities. As swopaplot.com will be a growing community (and a growing community!) hopefully there’ll be more ideas from you.

Of course although this is an exciting prospect there are some quite serious challenges. We’ll be developing some form of simple suggested contract to help people who meet via swopaplot to agree ground rules (if you’ll pardon the pun) – such as what type of access is required and provided and when, who pays for what, who provides tools and who provides storage, what use the garden is put to, who is responsible for safety issues, how you divide the spoils of your land+labour adventures etc. Any contract entered into would be between the individuals concerned and would be down to them to negotiate, but hopefully Swopaplot would be able to help point you in the right direction to protect your interests and keep you safe.

We’ll also need to get advice on personal safety issues, as it’s important that both garden owners and gardeners feel safe when meeting new people and potentially giving them access to parts of their homes. It would be very sad if an initiative intended to bring people together was to be abused, and I would hope that it never was, but we would need to take such a possibility seriously and encourage community members to take an active interest in their own safety.

But I wouldn’t want to let concerns overshadow the real possibilities that Swopaplot could open up – to bring neighbours together, to bridge generation gaps, to grow more local produce and to help London get a little bit greener.

The site’s not built yet. This blog is here as a record of the development process, and to let the people who want to use the site contribute to its development. It’s about gardening – so what better way to grow the site than organically?

What do you think? Are you interested? Excited? Do you have any requests or suggestions? Do you want to help out?

Do you dig it?

Let me know!

Love
– Chris