AN American gardener with more than 40 years? experience in vegetable and fruit gardening has hit out at the quality of allotment plots being offered to the community at Fatherford Lane. Tony Dion, who moved to Okehampton from Williamsburg, Virginia in order to spend more time gardening, says the ground is too stony to grow anything. But Okehampton United Non-Ecclesiastical Trust, which owns and supplies allotments around the town, says more work is still being done to improve the condition of the allotments. Mr Dion, 62, said: ?My wife and I visited the allotments to see the state of affairs, and we were extremely upset at the condition of the plots. ?The only time I have seen similar amounts of large rocks concentrated in one place is in a stone quarry. The ground rented to me for gardening is unsuitable for that purpose until the stones are removed. There?s no way you can plant in that ground.? Mr Dion said some of his favourite crops were root vegetables, such as carrots, parsnips, beetroots and turnips. ?Wherever we intend to grow the root crops, we would need to sift the entire row to remove rocks larger than 50mm in order to get straight vegetables. ?Luckily, I am in good health ? however, to remove rocks over 50mm from the entire plot would take me in excess of several hundred hours of back-breaking, manual labour, not to mention the fact that operating a tiller through those stones would be both damaging to the tines of the tiller, and dangerous to me and others from flying rocks.? Mr Dion is a certified master gardener and tree steward, with certificates from the Virginia Cooperative Extension Service. One of the first things he did on coming to Okehampton in April was to look into acquiring an allotment space. He contacted Okehampton United Non-Ecclesiastical Charity for plot number 13 in the Fatherford Lane Allotments, but his tenancy, which began earlier this month, got off to a bumpy start. Mr Dion said he had entered into the allotment contract in good faith but was ?dissatisfied? with the plots. He said there was ?no comparison? between the Exeter Road allotments which had been vacated and those at Fatherford Lane. ?The Exeter Road allotments have eight to ten inches of good solid earth with no rocks.? There are 31 plots at the Fatherford Lane allotments, all but five of which have already been taken up. Christine Marsh, chair of the Non-Ecclesiastical Trust said work was still being carried out on the new allotments, and urged patience from allotment holders: ?It will be handed over very, very soon. The allotments holders are needing to plant their crops. We are trying desperately to accommodate them. ?What the allotment holders are going to get is going to be far superior. A new piece of ground that hasn?t been worked for a long time will look a little barren, but we are trying to provide them with more facilities so it can be made good.? She said the trustees had agreed to give one year?s free rent to allotment holders at Fatherford Lane in light of the disruption, and other gardeners were happy with this form of compensation. Mrs Marsh said if Mr Dion was unhappy with the allotment offered at Fatherford Lane, he could sign up for one of the plots at the other allotment sites in town. Mr Dion said in reality the Fatherford Lane site was his only option, as all the other sites have waiting lists at present.
