'LandFit' is an initiative for bringing would-be gardeners together with gardens. You could call it garden sharing. Or open allotments. Basically we want to make the most of the green space in the city for the benefit of those who want to get their hands dirty doing some gardening.

The concept can work anywhere that a gardener and someone responsible for a garden (the 'lead stakeholder') agree to letting the gardener work in the garden. An example is the front garden three doors away from me, where my potatoes are just now coming up. As an organisation, 'LandFit' is about trying to help such agreements happen, and in ways which encourage food growing. What Landfit is not, is a free gardening service. In order for the concept to work, the gardener needs to have relative freedom in cultivation, again much the same as an allotment.

Given the immediate and wide applicability of the concept, this could be a huge task. At the moment we are thinking about (1) governance issues for us as an organisation, (2) developing a web site to hold information about gardeners and gardens, (3) developing a model agreement between gardener and 'lead stakeholder', and (4) ways in which LandFit style agreements can be supported.

what we are doing

Practically, we want to focus on getting something up and running in Lewisham, but there is absolutely nothing stopping anyone using the concept. In fact, as we exchange ideas, we find that other people are doing the same thing. We'd love to hear from anyone else doing this sort of thing, either established or starting out. When we have this web site more established, it should have a forum for such accounts of experience. I'm equally interested by how to go about negotiating with 'stakeholders' and the issues of gardening. These will not be problem free. One thing we stress is that the basic agreement should be between the gardener and stakeholder - not 'LandFit' as an organisation. That way I think we - you - avoid legal issues. Think of it as matchmaking.