Appendix to Chapter 4
Paradise, a place of timeless harmony, was a garden. In the Abrahamic faiths, it was the Garden of Eden. Humans lived in harmony with God and with the plants and animals around them until their fall from grace.
Gardens are still images or reflections of paradise, attempts to re-create something of this lost world of goodness and beauty, not least within cities. Beautiful gardens, both public and private, give joy to many millions of people.
At a more modest level, gardening is one of the most frequent ways of relating to the nonhuman world, and increasingly so. In the U.S., in 2014, 35 percent of all households were growing food at home or in a community garden.17 In the U.K., gardening is the most popular outdoor activity, involving about 50 percent of the population.18 In addition, many people keep houseplants, even if they do not have a garden. And many buy cut flowers for their homes.
In Britain, gardens of various sizes are usually attached to houses. In addition, many people have vegetable gardens at some distance from their houses, in the form of allotments. But allotments are usually small, normally sixteen or thirty-two to the acre, or about 2,700 or 1,350 square feet each. They are also very functional and not at all secret.
I was exceptionally fortunate to have secret gardens with fruit trees when I was a child, and for years I thought of this as impossible in the modern world. Urban land capable of being developed is too expensive, and farmland usually changes hands in units of hundreds of acres. But I now think that family orchards are not only possible, but could become widely available.
Look at this situation from the point of view of a landowner. Imagine you own agricultural land near a town or city, and that this land is zoned for agriculture and cannot be developed for building. Imagine you take just one acre and divide it into about five gardens, each about one fifth of an acre, roughly 8,000 square feet. These would be large enough to contain an orchard, a vegetable garden, and grassy areas as well as flower beds. Such a garden could be a rough rectangular shape of 80 by 100 feet. The gardens could be surrounded by hedges and laid out with access paths, a parking area for cars and bicycles, and maybe even a communal picnic area with a fire pit for barbecues.
How much would these family orchards cost? In 2016, agricultural land in England cost up to £9,000 (∼$12,700) per acre. To make the math simpler, assume the value of this acre to be £10,000. When divided into five, the land cost of each orchard would be about £2,000. Add the cost of putting in the pathways and hedges, laying out communal areas, and perhaps installing hand pumps or connections to a water supply—say, about £3,000 per orchard. Thus, each of these five family orchards would have a cost of around £5,000. How much could they be sold for? I would guess at least £15,000. Maybe much more, if there were a low supply and high demand. In other words, this project would probably be profitable financially and would not require grants or subsidies.
Farmers or landowners who already own land near towns might be reluctant to sell, but might instead want to rent or lease their orchards. How much might they fetch in rent? I would guess at least £20 a week each, or roughly £1,000 a year. And, depending on supply and demand, rental or lease values might be much higher. For comparison, average rental levels of arable agricultural land are currently about £100 per acre per year. An acre rented out as five orchards would bring in at least £5,000 a year, fifty times more.
Of course, there would have to be legal provisions that enabled orchard-holders to restrain their neighbors from using the orchard as a residence, a scrapyard, or a place to make loud noise. There could be an orchard-holders’ association with a joint share of common parts, like paths, parking area, water supply, and collective barbecue garden. In other words, the orchard complex could be run along the same lines as many blocks of apartments or condominiums.
In Russia during the Soviet era, and still today, millions of people had dachas outside the city where they would stay on weekends and in the summer, using their gardens to grow fruit and vegetables and keep chickens. The area of a typical dacha is about 600 square meters, or about 6,500 square feet, slightly less than the orchard size proposed here.
The family orchard scheme would differ from dachas in that these gardens could not, and should not, be used as residences, otherwise they would soon turn into housing developments.
The orchard scheme should not raise major difficulties for planning permission, because it does not involve building houses or structures for living in. Agricultural land would be turned into horticultural land, in both cases dedicated to the growing of plants.
Imagine what would happen if a trial scheme proved a success. The demand for family orchards would increase rapidly. There would be a strong incentive to supply them. And many families would then have orchards where their children could play, where they could grow their fruits and vegetables and enjoy an oasis of peace. There would be far greater biodiversity, because orchards with hedges, fruit trees, flower beds, and vegetable gardens contain many more kinds of plants and animals than a monoculture of an arable crop. All this is possible, feasible, and desirable.