To make a nose for Olaf

By Tristan Hale

“If kids grow kale, kids eat kale. If kids grow tomatoes, kids eat tomatoes”.

Ron Finley: a guerrilla gardener in South Central LA.

Here in Annecy, we are fortunate that we don’t need to cultivate land we don’t own if we want to grow stuff. Through its Jardins en ville scheme, the city council offers residents 25m² allotments for a nominal rent along with free courses in responsible gardening.

My family joined the scheme in early 2020 as gardening newbies and quickly discovered the many benefits. Remember the first lockdown? Our new allotment – fortuitously just within 1km of our apartment – was where we spent our hour of outdoor exercise each day; in the company of, but safely distanced from, other gardeners at the site.

For our first season, we nominated an asylum-seeking family as our co-gardeners. It was a far cry from the hectares of land on which they used to grow watermelons, but it allowed them to cultivate a few precious square metres and to be part of a community of local growers.

When it was time to apply for Spring 2021 entry, my wife Jackie helped two asylum-seeking families to submit their applications. To everyone’s delight, both applications were successful, and one of the family members, a 4-year-old girl, insisted on using the allotment to grow carrots “to make a nose for Olaf”.

Ron Finley was almost right. If kids grow carrots, kids eat carrots… unless they use them to make snowmen instead!

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How can you contribute to this project?

Thanks to your cash donations, Lake Aid covers the small annual fees for the allotments, and gives our gardening families an allowance for wellies, gloves, seeds and plants. We may also be interested if you can donate seeds or seedlings.

If you live in la Commune Nouvelle d’Annecy, why not apply for your own allotment in October/November 2021 for entry in Spring 2022? To discuss the possibility of co-gardening with an asylum-seeking family, contact us at lakeaid74@gmail.com.