Hi Sue
It was so sickening to read about the loss of your allotments after all that hard work and in such a lovely place. It makes me so angry the way people are so dismissive of allotments in this way.
Our allotments are just over 200 years old and a private charity all this time but it hasn’t stopped three of our boundaries of old hedgerows, trees and all their wldlife from coming under threat from our next door neighbour! When a housing planning application was put in on the neighbour’s site for 10 houses (too many for the size), the local authority would not put the boundaries as part of a planning condition and in fact said they would discuss and agree with the developer only (and not include the allotments in the discussion) once permission had been given! They wanted to carry out work on four trees actually on our site too. We even had to fight the ownership of our access path but luckily it was registered with the Land Registry so we had proof. We fought this application off but another will be coming along again.
It is so disappointing that we always have to keep fighting for our allotments and other people do not appreciate the many contributions they make.
Sounds like you are making good headway with the pots though and I wish you well with them and the wildlife in your garden. Well done Sue.