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…)

Design a society

This looks cool: www.designingasociety.org/ A bit crazy, but cool. Hmm. I’ve always wanted to be a bit crazy but cool.

Come to think of it, I can take or leave the crazy bit. Maybe.

Big thanks to Swapaskill!

Nicole from Swapaskill has very kindly provided some feedback on their experience with getting their site up and running. Cheers 🙂

New links page

I’ve added a links page for sites you might find interesting. Like swopaplot.com I expect it’ll be growing a lot during the coming months…

Trashing allotments for the Olympics?

James posted a comment here pointing out that Manor Garden Allotments is to be swallowed up by the 2012 Olympics site. Crazy!

There’s a petition you can sign at http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/manorgardens/
and more about the allotments here: http://www.lifeisland.org/

Surely there should be a way to incorporate the allotments into the site as an example of best practice in the development of urban green spaces?

Thanks for the links James. I think there’s a hell of a lot the Olympics can do for raising awareness of environmental issues. But they’re clearly not doing enough!

Locally energised

Great piece on local energy here found by my wonderful wife. Micro generation is the future – so why aren’t the government installing the gear in every school in the country to inspire the kids who’ll convince the parents that if they don’t insulate their houses and switch their lights off and maybe even get some hot water tubes on the roof there won’t be much of a planet to hand over…?

Just a thought like.

Swapaskill (with an A)

Fantastic! It looks like somebody else has had a similar – if subtly different – idea. I hope it works really well. The more swoppers – er, or swappers – the merrier!

Check out swapaskill.com to find out more.

Proper allotments!

I just found this great site about managing allotments. It’s written with the outer London borough of Sutton in mind, but has tips for allotment management in general, some of which could also be applied to other gardening projects.

Now you might think that what were growing here at swopaplot.com could be seen to be in competition with traditional allotments, but the way I see it, the more urban land there is out there being used productively (and the more people there are looking after little bits of our urban environment) the better! So raise your tomatoes to the allotmenteers, and long may their leeks grow!