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!

Compost CORNER!

I found my old Compost Corner t-shirt. Sadly it no longer fits.

First bash at the logo

Nicky’s had a first go at the logo. What a star!

I reckon it might be nice to have a bit of green in it too, and maybe tweak the font a bit so that the O looks a bit less like an A (yes, yes, I know, “swap” is usually spelled* with an A!)

What do you think?

* Ooh, that’s interesting. I first spelled “spelled” as “spelt”. And it turns out that spelt is actually a Bronze Age wheat variety. Fascinating, Captain!

Blog tweakage

I’ve tweaked the blog design a bit so it’s hopefully a bit easier to use and looks a little bit less clinical looking. It’ll all change again when we do the proper designs of course.

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

More on the logo

Nicky asked here for some more of an idea about how the logo might go.

I went on a bit of a ramble, shared here for the record:

The Compost Corner tshirt [I had a small Compost Corner tshirt – a gift from Bob Carolgees to my aunty – an irrelevant and distracting detail I’m sure you’ll agree] is a sort of bright but mustardy yellow with brown and green print on it. Very tasteful. I quite like the idea of an early 70s-ish feel to it – like it’s on a big round badge on a denim jacket with swop round the top and plot round the bottom and ‘a’ in the middle. Maybe sort of Goodies writing or something from SWAPSHOP. Flowers. The odd potato plant. Maybe a carrot or two. Sunshine. Showers. A smiley chap with a beard. Wellies. A watering can. Some gardening tools. A cuddly toy. No, sorry, that’s the wrong show – but at least it was on the BBC. (That’s just a sort of mind space – take your pick.)

Sorry you missed out on all the wonderful kids’ advertising of the past – it was splendid indeed. Great jingles. And a man dressed up as a hamburger. For what more could you ask?

Need a logo

I sent this to one of my friends who has offered to lend a hand with getting swopaplot out of the nursery and into the vegetable patch (or something). And then I thought of you O Reader. So here it is. And a very merry Christmas to you all (that’ll be me then).

Hi Nicky. A very merry Christmas to you!

My last day at work. Far too much to do as usual but that says more about my time management than anything else.

Did you get an email from chris AT swopaplot.com by any chance? ‘Tis I! as I believe they would say in ‘Allo ‘Allo. There is a lot to do still to get that particular monkey off the ground – but at least I now have the beginning of a presence courtesy of WordPress (a nice stopgap of a blog). Know anyone who’s any good at logo design? I’d quite like a nice round button with

swop
a
plot

on it – sort of a-la “Compost Corner” if your memory goes back that far. (Having said that – as work have just given me a shiny new PC with Photoshop CS2 on it I should probably do this myself!!*)

More news as it organically escapes. Have a fab Christmas!
– Chris
(& Nikky & Meg)

PS. I wrote that for you, but I think I’ll share it with my blog audience (that’ll be me then) if that’s OK

*in my own time, honestly boss.