About us

Hello. And thanks for being interested enough to get to this page!

My name’s Chris. I’m working with some friends and family to build a website to grow gardens and gardeners. It’s going to be called swopaplot.com. (I’m not much of a gardener myself – yet. So far I’ve been better at growing ideas and websites than your actual plants. But everyone’s got to start somewhere…)

So. Swopaplot. What’s the big idea?

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.

More than just “gardener meets garden”

There will be other areas on swopaplot.com. Pretty obvious things 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. And of course there will 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.

Trickier bits

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.

Staying 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.

Growing together

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 – reducing those food miles and the size of our monster carbon footbrints – and so help London get a little bit greener.

Nice idea, but what’s in it for Chris?

Thought you’d never ask.

Well, aside from the vast satisfaction of turning London into a (put on best Pearly King accent) bloomin’ paradise, I’m hoping I might make a few quid out of selling some advertising space around the edges of the site. Garden centres – that sort of thing. So if you’d be interested in advertising on swopaplot.com let me know! There won’t be any advertising on this blog though (in its current form at any rate). The idea is to cover the running costs of the site as it develops, and to maybe have a bit left over for me to plant somewhere else.

The core service of matching up gardens and gardeners, and the related core community features – whatever they turn out to be – will be free of course! Although I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of charging a modest amount for optional extras at some point in the future – especially if they’re things that cost to set up.

Sound fair? (I hope so, but I’m sure you’ll tell me if you think otherwise!)

Er, but this is just a blog, not a proper site…

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?

We’re planting this beanstalk seed of a blog in the loamy soil of the web – who knows what it might grow into..? Link to us. Take our RSS feed. Come back and find out how we’re doing. And if you want to get involved email me or leave a comment here.

Why London?
We’re starting in London, because that’s where I live. And because there are a lot of people living in small spaces without any garden, and many over-subscribed allotment lists. But it could seed itself all over the place.

Together we’re going to make London a little bit greener! Look forward to growing to know you.

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? Yes? No? Let me know! (I’m chris AT swopaplot.com)

Love
– Chris