Rachael Hill: Britain’s Best Allotment

After blogging at the beginning of the month about my belief in autonomous parenting and independent play, a big part of which involves chucking the kids in the garden and letting them get on with it…

The kids are taking it in turns to "rescue" each other off the climbing frame. Taking bets on who ends up with a broken leg first…

— Jem (@jemjabella) September 7, 2015

…I was really excited to read about the recent winner of ‘Britain’s Best Allotment Competition‘. (The competition ran from Feb until July 2015. Created by HIPPO, national waste management experts and inventor of the HIPPOBAG, to generate greater awareness of the many benefits of owning an allotment.)

Anyway, the winner was a lady called Rachael Hill, who keeps the allotment with her family. Geoff (dad) does the manual labour, and then 3 of Rachael’s children help out every day as well as having their own raised beds, which has encouraged them to play independently and learn by themselves, and given them responsibility for their own little patch (and produce!)

Rachael’s boys on the allotment

But a family allotment is not what fascinated me about this story: it’s the fact that Rachael is an Ofsted registered childminder, and does a lot of her minding ON the allotment. This is awesome to me for two reasons:

1) Because I occasionally make an effort to grow veg etc — although the chaos of the past couple of years has seen my raised beds turned over to weeds and brambles! — I know how much hard work is involved in keeping just a small amount of land weed-free, watered and tidy. To do this with an entire allotment whilst juggling work and family etc is impressive.

2) Because despite encouraging my kids to get in the garden and get dirty, they mostly kill more plants than they grow. To be able to turn that around and grow your allotment to prize-winning status with the “help” of both your own kids and mindees is doubly impressive.

My two in their native habitat: Oliver, 16 months “helping” and Isabel this weekend surveying her jungle

Rachael won £1000 of gardening vouchers and a HIPPO clear-up for the whole allotment site. The members of the allotment committee are working to tidy up an area with a high level of fly tipping on the site so that they can turn it into a community area for all members to enjoy, and a much safer environment for children.

I have to admit reading about Rachael’s win has inspired me to get off my bum and finally do something about my back garden, but it’s unlikely I’ll be winning any prizes any time soon…