Landshare: gardens and allotments

yours2share has a new category: landshare. This category is for people who want to share land for vegetable plots, gardens, horses and livestock. You may have land that you are willing to allow other people to use; or want a piece of land that you can use to grow vegetables or use for livestock. There is detailed guidance and we will be working with Net Lawman to create new template contracts for this.

This has been a potential category for a year or so, but a recent conversation with someone I met at a trade show, prompted me to get on and set it up.

I was with my partner at an exhibition for working for charities and got talking to a man who worked for a charity that enables elderly people to go on holiday.  I have been wondering whether owners of second homes and boats would consider sharing or donating use of their house or boat to charities who operate holidays for disadvantaged people.  So I explained what yours2share does.

As so often happens, the man gave me a great example of sharing.  His daughter had bought a terraced house with a garden at the front and back.  After a few months, she realised that keeping them in order was much more work than she had bargained for, and she was not interested in gardening.  To make matters worse, her neighbours were proud gardeners and had beautifully manicured front gardens: her scruffy patch was letting them down.  She asked her father what she should do as she couldn’t afford to pay for a gardener.

He suggested that she ask her neighbours if they would be willing to help her.  She spoke to them and found that several were delighted to help if they could use her back garden as a vegetable patch.  She was pleased to allow them to do this and now gets some fresh fruit and vegetables during the summer.

Everyone is happy.  A little communication and a willingness to share goes an awfully long way.