The site for Bristol’s first commercial allotment scheme has been unveiled - and there could be as many as 700 new allotment plots available there. Bosses at Roots, which runs a large allotment in Bath which started earlier this year, say they hope to have the site at Abbots Leigh up and running by the spring of next year.
The team told Bristol Live back in April how their idea for large new allotment sites came together during lockdown and was set up in Bath in 2021 and finally opened in March this year. They announced then that they intended to open a second at a site in Bristol, but had not identified one here yet.
Now Roots have, and it could well be twice the size of the Bath site, which is at Newbridge on the edge of the city. Roots have announced that the Bristol site will be at Abbots Leigh, with a field to the east of the main A369 Abbots Leigh Road, right next to the main entrance to Leigh Woods opposite the Clifton College sports ground.
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“It’s a really good site with trees all around it and we’re looking to have 700 plots, which will be manageable,” said one of the four founders of Roots, William Gay. “The Bath site has 300 by comparison. At the Abbots Leigh site we’ve already sold 30 per cent of the plots, so we’re hopeful that it will probably be sold out by the time we open it,” he added.
Mr Gay said they do not require planning permission to change the use of the field, which is between the main vehicular access to the Forestry England’s Leigh Woods car park and Ashgrove Avenue, to create an allotment site.
There are four different sizes of plots being advertised at the Roots site in Abbots Leigh, which Roots called ‘patches’. A ‘micro patch’ measure 12sq metres and costs £9.99 a month. A larger ‘starter patch’ is three times the size at 36 sqm, and is £19.99 a month. A ‘couples patch’ is twice the size again at 72 sqm, and is £34.99 a month, and a group patch measures 108 sqm and is £49.99 a month.
For comparison, a plot at one of the six different allotment sites run by the Hotwells and District Allotments Association on the western edge of Bristol will cost between £40 and £70 a year, depending on its size - although there is a waiting list of around 18 months.
Those signing up for the allotment patches at Roots get beds that are ready to plant, regular seed packs, running water a ‘free personal trowel’, ready to plant ‘plug plants’, access to community tools and monthly events, talks and workshops.
Back in April, when Roots launched in Bath and announced their intention to come to Bristol, brothers William and Joshua Gay and their friends Ed Morrison and Christian Samuel said they were inspired by a new-found love of getting back to nature and growing things - as well as the huge waiting lists for plots in traditional council-run or society-run allotments in Bristol.
“With a plot you get from the council, if you are lucky enough to get one, you pay your yearly fee, and get a basic bit of land that needs lots and lots of work just to get started,” said William Gay back in April. “It might have been neglected before, overgrown, and not good at all. You could spend between 30 and 50 hours clearing it before you can get planting.”
“What we have is that we set you up so you are ready to plant straight away. You get seeds, tools, we can provide ready-to-plant plugs, everything you need,” he added.
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