I have been lamenting the lack of decently-sized allotment gardens in this part of the city for some time. There are a few teeny tiny ones down at the local collective garden, but less than a metre square and only two or three of them. Not really what I'm looking for.
My next thought was garden sharing - there's a website (pretersonjardin.be) which links up budding gardners with people wanting to share unused garden space. (Note: I have not used the site so cannot comment on its reliability etc). I periodically check but nothing ever comes up this central, it's mostly further out in the suburbs.
But a chance discovery informed me that Brussels Environment - an organisation that covers a range of environment-related activities here from maintaining the public parks to running information campaigns promoting seasonal eating to collecting and composting the city's Christmas trees every January - offers 'family gardens' (ie decent-sized allotments) in various nature reserves, one of which is just at the edge of the city and served by a bus route. And the waiting list is only six months.
Image: http://www.bruxellesenvironnement.be
I think this is one of those times when I need to hold myself back - I've only just planted the first seedlings of my container garden on the balcony, so it would probably be a good idea to build some confidence and test my commitment with that before taking on an allotment garden I would need to visit every weekend.
But it's very very tempting...
