Food for body and soul

Virva Salmivaara

 

Busy working days and the hectic urban atmosphere become a distant memory, when you dig in the flowerbeds or kitchen garden and get a little soil under your fingernails. Allotments, within easy reach by bus or metro, provide an excellent opportunity for relaxation for the inhabitants of the asphalt jungle.

Allotment gardens were born in Europe in the 19^th century, when monasteries, cities, and factories provided plots for urban workers to grow food for their families and keep pigs and hens, and other small domestic animals. Today, there are a total of three million allotment gardeners all over Europe, who till their soil mostly for fun and to delight the eye.

Breathing space for City dwellers

The Tuononens come to their allotment, acquired about six years ago, almost every night from spring to autumn. On weekends, they even spend nights there. The little allotment cottage is a second home, where friends and family gather to barbecue and spend summer evenings.

"The 250 square metre lot keeps two people busy on weekday evenings. We have to be careful not to cross the fine line between work and pleasure," says Ulla Tuononen with a laugh.

The green oasis produces dozens of kilograms of plums, as well as apples, berries, and even zucchini. However, one only needs to jump over the garden fence to get to the grocer's. "I'm not looking for countryside exotic in my garden. For me, this is a substitute for a balcony, only ten minutes from my home."

The speciality of this particular allotment garden is an outdoor swimming pool right next door, which naturally also offers the opportunity to go to the sauna. The allotment garden also has indoor toilets and showers and rubbish collection points ­ and even the newspaper is delivered to the cottages' own mailboxes.

Getting fit

Every allotment garden is run by an association, which takes care of communal affairs. Membership fees cover the water and electricity bills of the allotment gardeners. In addition to more everyday tasks and building and repairing things together, the association organises summer parties for the gardeners and near-by residents. There is naturally a party at Midsummer, and often at harvest-time, too.

No-one needs to be alone at an allotment garden. You can find friends in, for example, music or crafts clubs, and the shared barbecue is a place to chat while grilling your sausages and on a summer's day, you can join in a game of croquet. "The pensioners often swish past our gate with their Nordic walking poles," Ulla says with a smile. "The old ladies and gentlemen keep their gardens shipshape, and I've never seen as fit pensioners as here," she praises her neighbours.

However, at the moment, it seems that a change of generation is taking place at the allotment garden, as young couples and families with children are becoming increasingly common. There is plenty of room for children to play and novice gardeners can borrow gardening books from the garden's own library.

The promised land of summer cottages

Finland has a strong summer cottage culture. There are 450,000 summer cottages, and people travelling to and from their cottages crowd the highways on summer weekends. Allotment gardens are gaining in popularity, too. The first allotment garden was established in 1916 and, today, Finland has approximately fifty allotment gardens and 5,000 allotment gardeners.

The initial investment in an allotment garden cottage is often small, because only the cottage changes owners. The gardener leases the plot from the allotment garden association, which in turn leases the land from the city.

Only one in ten allotment garden cottages changes hands annually. One of the more famous gardeners to give up her cottage was the President of Finland, Tarja Halonen, who sold her cottage after moving from her flat into the President's of-ficial residence, which boasts extensive gardens. ß

 

SCIENTIFIC STUDY ON THIS TOO In the modern times, there are attempts to provide urban dwellers with living, working, and recreation conditions that are as reasonably priced and satisfying as possible. In other words, there is a desire to create a pleasant and harmonious setting for urban life. Therefore, it is felt to be important that urban dwellers have the opportunity to spend time outdoors in the fresh air, close to nature; spiritual and physical well-being is largely dependent on it," wrote Anna-Maija Jernvall in her thesis back in 1954. The allotment garden ideology spread to Finland in the early 1900s from Denmark, Germany, and Sweden. It was linked to industrialisation and urbanisation, taking place simultaneously. The ideology was part of the social policy practised in Finland. The authorities wanted to provide the urban population with a wholesome way of spending their free time, but also to teach gardeners and their children the importance of work and generate more positive attitudes towards the prevailing social system. Free time without beneficial pastimes was evil. When workers achieved the eight-hour working day, allotment gardening increased significantly. Erja Glad has studied the realisation of the allotment garden ideology in Tampere, where the first large allotment garden in Finland was established in 1916. Pertti Tossavainen has charted the emergence and early years of allotment gardening in Helsinki, where the focus shifted in the late 1930s. Today, Helsinki has nine allotment gardens. Today's allotment garden culture has been researched by Kirsi Eilola. She divided allotment gardeners into four groups: toilers, country folk, holidaymakers, and family-oriented. The toilers are workaholics, who find pleasure in toiling away in the kitchen garden or repairing the cottage. Family-oriented gardeners find it important to spend time together as a family and teach their children about nature. Holidaymakers value fresh outdoor air and resting and want to withdraw to their own peace. Country folk are drawn to allotment gardening most of all by the communal nature of the hobby; the security created by the garden, the social relationships and, on the other hand, the social control of the community. "In an allotment garden, a worker discussing tending his plot may feel to be an equal gardener to his neighbour, a secondary school teacher. Many a family man who owns an allotment garden prefers to spend his weekends tilling his land, instead of whiling away the hours in a bar with friends." This is what Jernvall wrote in 1954, a finding that probably still holds true.