Green and pleasant land

[Jon Clarke]

Once in a while one gets to smile and thank people for their genuine helpfulness and relaxed demeanor, and whilst others can be jobsworths the brilliant management down at Crystal Palace Sports Centre helped out with a cheeky request and now parts of a Beckenham Allotment will be certainly a 'Green and pleasant land'.

Attending the revamped sports centre these past weeks I noticed that they had a pile of discarded worn astroturf carpet and cheekily asked if I could take it away, for use on an allotment where it would be perfect for not only covering overgrown weeds and killing them off, but also providing a pleasant surface for a play area for the growing numbers of families now getting to grips with urban-gardening.

Past forays to the old Studio outside the Spa in Beckenham had been rewarded with the developers there allowing us to take their old browny-red carpets away for them, saving them from going to landfill and doing a great job at the allotment, but they do creat a bit of an eyesore and are patchy to say the least.

But, the staff of Crystal Palace were so kind and said by all means take the rolls of carpet whenever, they had been looking to get rid of them for ages, so we dually obliged and picked them up yesterday. It's always good to find a new and useful home for this type of thing and the helpfulness of management, staff and security, especially pulling the 30 foot wide rolls up the hill to to the transport was fantastic.

Next on the agenda is to build a pallat maze and ask the businesses up by the Post Office sorting office whether we can have the large cardboard cylinders for raised planters to line the paths and get the kids planting all kinds of veg, herbs and flowers in their own play area. I wish I could find an old shed though for them to have a den, any offers happily accepted.