Allan is a keen gardener growing flowers and produce alike. He explains that his love of gardening is a kind of therapy. Allan was fostered from a young age and found comfort in his first packet of seeds given to him as a boy. He is now the editor of the Observer Food Monthly.

1000 LONDONERS

This film is part of 1000 Londoners, a ten-year digital project which aims to create a digital portrait of a city through 1000 of the people who identify themselves with it. The profile contains a 3 minute film that gives an insight into the life of the Londoner, as well as their personal photos of London and some answers to crucial questions about their views on London life. Over the course of the project we aim to reveal as many facets of the capital as possible, seeing city life from 1000 points of view.

www.1000londoners.com
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Twitter @1000_londoners
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1000 Londoners is produced by South London based film production company and social enterprise, Chocolate Films. The filmmakers from Chocolate Films will be both producing the films and providing opportunities to young people and community groups to make their own short documentaries, which will contribute to the 1000 films. Visit www.chocolatefilms.com.

TRANSCRIPT

I share a plot with Mary, or more accurately: Mary shares her plot with me. A couple of years ago, Mary was ill. And she's very constant, Mary. She's here a lot and she's very good. And you can tell how somebody's… how somebody's health and happiness is by their piece of land. It felt like that the allotment was a reflection of what was going on in her life. And that if I could keep the allotment healthy and happy and full of life and full of colour, then that somehow would help.

We both grow from seed and I said that I grew seed, because I thought it was a symbol of hope. You buy something for two pounds, you put it in the ground and magic happens. And she smiled and said for her seed was future. And I thought: she'll be ok.

She is much, much better. And you can see it on the land, like her land's now stronger.

It's a place where I come to just be non-verbal, in a way. It's a place I come to just, to grow something. The, the simple magic of putting seed into brown ground and watching it become colourful and watching it become food.

I was the third pregnancy of a nineteen year old girl. When I was five, I was reunited with my brother for the first time in a children's home in Devon. And we were up for adoption. And an elderly couple who had married late, who couldn't have their own children, wanted to adopt a baby girl and they couldn't. But they did take on two boys. And they were called Lilian and Dudley Drabble and they bought a house by a river in South Devon. And he was an obsessive gardener. If he found a patch of field, he turned it into a garden, in fact he turned it into a croft, he turned it into an orchard. And I got the bug.

I grew nasturtiums and they grew. And they gave marigold to my brother and they didn't grow so well. I grow them still. I grow these flowers in a subconscious attempt, I think, to make it, everything ok. And, uhm, my brother didn't do very well, died a couple of years ago and somehow, subconsciously I… in some way, that if I grow them I'm keeping his memory. But if I grow them I'm changing his childhood.

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