Month: August 2024

It’s harvest time, and many growers will have more than they can eat for the time being.

Sue Waring – on Plot 60 PPA – is a volunteer worker for this charity. They cook free meals on a Wednesday evening, and would be grateful for any spare produce that plot holders might have.

Sue says that those with crops to give can contact her to make arrangements, or just leave it in the greenhouse on Plot 60. However, also to let Sue know if they have done this by the form below, so that she can collect the food before it spoils or is eaten by animals.

To contact Sue by email, please use this form:-

Thank you Sue.

PPA Website Team.

Cardiff Council’s “Understanding The Allotments Rules” guide says that children must be supervised at all times.

For this reason, plot holders are, quite reasonably, not required to make their gardens completely free of any conceivable hazard to children. It’d be unduly onerous to impose this burden upon them too. This wouldn’t, however, excuse any patent recklessness on anyone’s part, naturally.

Typically, there may be improvised structures, using materials such as sharp corrugated metal on plots, or agrichemicals on them. There might be glass cold frames – through which a child could fall.

Additionally, PPAA’s understanding of correspondence received this morning from their insurer is, that if anything should happen to children who went off-plot, then they wouldn’t be covered under its Public Liability insurance. The parents/guardians would be seen as negligent by the insurance company, as the children weren’t supervised – as instructed by the Council.

Parents and grandparents are well-represented on PPAA Committee, and they fully understand that busy parents, especially during the school summer holidays, may find it difficult to tend their gardens without bringing their children with them. However, lately, there’ve been a number of instances of completely unsupervised children ranging the whole site, often on cycles. This, combined with the fact that too many drivers don’t keep to the 5 mph site limit, is a cause for concern. Children have also been seen going behind brick cubicles, where all manner of things might have been fly-tipped, before volunteers could discover and remove them.

There’ve also been reports of minor – non-malicious – incidents of mischief, of just the sort that children might do. (For instance one plot holder said that someone had fiddled with their ornamental and humorous display of second-hand spectacles by a track.)

PPAA empathise fully with parents and grandparents as to the demands of childcare, and at the same time getting on with what needs to be done, but thought that it was timely to publish this post. However, they also wholeheartedly support educating kids, as to what’s involved in producing our food, and perhaps – we’d all hope – inspiring future gardeners.

Happy gardening – and family life – to all!

PPA Website Team

The apparatus installed on PPA site last spring turned out to be very useful and helpful, and led to PPAA’s being able to report serious offences, along with evidence identifying the offenders. They were also able to address specific acts, such as fly-tipping by identifiable plot holders. Furthermore, some plot holders who’d been the victims of persistent vexatious interference with their plots noted that this had also stopped during this time.

Sadly, but perhaps predictably, that apparatus itself has now been stolen, and – equally dismally – some plot holders report a resumption of disturbance to their plots. Fortunately the devices weren’t greatly expensive, but nonetheless such offences are a very unwelcome nuisance.

Given the possible implications of these facts, from now, on neither the nature nor the siting of surveillance equipment will be announced, and these’ll likely often be discreet and vary.

There’re adequate notices outside the gates and around the site to comply with e.g. privacy laws in these things.

PPA Website Team