Nyudies take over Britain

Gardening catches the fancy of Britain's yuppies, leading to the coinage of a new word: nyudies (new yuppie diggers)

No weekend newspaper is complete these days without a photo of some well-known person smiling over a basket or bowl of home-grown vegetables. Last week, a former rock wife, who in her youth woke up "craving a cigarette laced with heroin", enthused about the face-tingling thrill of eating freshly picked salad. Yes, you can forget handbags and shoes. The latest must-have in Britain is a vegetable patch.

The flourishing "grow your own" movement even received a royal endorsement last month when the Queen revealed her new veg plot at Buckingham Palace.

So, why have we all gone nuts about vegetables? Growing your own saves money, as long as you resist splashing out on gardening accessories, that is. But there's more to it than the credit crunch. Donna McDaid, of the National Society of Allotments and Leisure Gardeners (NSALG), says: "It's about health and the environment. It's about having control over your food, growing organic and saving food miles."

Francijn Suermondt, marketing coordinator at Suttons, a leading seed supplier, says that TV chefs such as Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall have had an influence, with their focus on healthy, home-grown food. "The world is changing," she says. "We all want to be more down to earth and enjoy the simple things."
Last year, sales of vegetable seeds overtook sales of flower seeds for the first time since the Second World War. Suttons, for example, sold 60 per cent flowers to 40 per cent vegetables five years ago but now sells 70 per cent vegetables to 30 per cent flowers.


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The humble allotment has become a coveted lifestyle accessory. The original purpose of these parcels of land was to enable the poor to grow food, but anyone can apply for one. They are available to rent cheaply, mostly from local councils. That's if you can get one. More than 1,00,000 people are on waiting lists. In my area, I would have to wait 10 years for a good plot. In the 1980s and 1990s, many were underused and sold off as most Britons preferred the convenience of the supermarket. Now only about 3,00,000 are left, compared with 1.4 million in 1943.

Until recently, the stereotypical allotment-holder was an old man in an even-older cardigan, but things have changed. "There are lots of mothers with young children who see it as a family activity," Suermondt says. A friend of mine tells me that in his village the local allotments are full of young people. "Teenagers think it's cool," he says. And then there's the wealthy and the fashionable. Jenny Dyson, editor of Rubbish magazine, wrote in The Sunday Times in March: "Now it's all competitive social one-upmanship, brand new Hunter clogs and swarms of Nyudies new yuppie diggers."

To help to meet demand The National Trust is creating 1,000 new plots on Trust land. In London, a project called Capital Growth aims to create 2,012 more spaces before the 2012 Olympics.



As well as fashion, there's passion. Gardening, it seems, can do wonders for your sex appeal. Laetitia Maklouf, author of The Virgin Gardener for beginners published by Bloomsbury, says that when she took up gardening she suddenly became more attractive to men, and met her husband.

"I don't think it's a coincidence that I got asked out on a lot of dates," she says. "It's mostly because at nearly 30 I had finally found my thing in life. It made me really happy and happy, relaxed people are attractive."

But the fact that her "thing" was gardening rather than accountancy or quantum physics did have something to do with it.u00a0

"Gardening is sexy and earthy. It's very basic. Plants are all about reproduction and sex. They aren't there for our enjoyment, as much as we like to think they are. Their purpose is to attract, get pollinated and reproduce. We can learn a lot from them. They don't suffer from the insecurities we suffer from. They don't worry about whether their bum looks big."

And if you are tending plants on balconies, window sills or in your garden, you will spend more time at home. "You stay in more, and people who stay in cuddle up more," Ms Maklouf says. "It's about togetherness and bringing food to the table. It's loving and cosy, but without being twee."

And look what growing your own did for the actress Felicity Kendal. In jeans and wellies in the 1970s self-sufficiency TV sitcom The Good Life, she became one of the most desired British women of all time. Of course, men who grow their own inflame women too. Newspapers and magazines regularly ask their readers "Which TV gardener do you fancy most?"

As a sign of the times, a new type of matchmaking has evolved a website called Landshare enables people with spare land to meet people looking to grow vegetables.

Alison Gibson is a London-based freelance journalist