The night before Halloween, and my thoughts return to the past. It is 15 years since we threw a kids’ party to mark the handover of the first Observer organic allotment. The plot paths were lined with pumpkins. California baker Claire Ptak made us trays of eerie marshmallow treats.
We had gardened for a year, digging in tonnes of organic matter, digging out bricks and broken glass. We worked with a local school gardening club and watched as they, too, grew.
‘Where’s the spicy flowers, Allan?’ one of the children would ask, transfixed by the taste of nasturtium. But it was the end of October and time to hand the plot back, productive now, to its tenant. We later started helping on a neighbouring allotment.
I had first met Howard Sooley when he was the photographer for Monty Don’s Observer column. I had long loved his work with Derek Jarman. How his pictures from Prospect Cottage had helped change the way we thought about what a garden could be.
This month also marks our 16th anniversary of working on an allotment together. His daughters, Nancy and Rose, just infants then, have moved on to other interests, but Howard and I meet at the plot most weeks in the early morning.
We’ve travelled together by train to Varanasi. We’ve seen the Northern Lights. But the times I most cherish are the quiet days near dawn on a small plot by Hampstead Heath, a few packets of seed in our pockets.
We were exiled from the allotments this time last year, returning to fresh soil in late spring. It’s been good growing. The plot full of colour; the ghosts of the past exorcised.
This weekend we’ll transplant our winter seedlings. We’ll unveil the last of the late-summer corn. We’ll split the last pumpkin. We’ll take it home.
Allan Jenkins’s Plot 29 (4th Estate, £9.99) is out now. Order it for £8.49 from guardianbookshop.com
Follow Allan on Instagram @allanjenkins21
