Could green-fingered Jeremy Corbyn please give us all an allotment if he becomes PM?

Continuing his series of reflections about places and pathways, Will Gore considers how a station full of fruit and vegetables has become part of his daily routine

Nurturing new growth is good for us (Getty/iStock)

Life, so it is tritely said, is all about the journey. In which case, the opposite of life is commuting, which is an unloved necessity that cannot be over soon enough.

For the most part, a good commute is one which involves more sitting than standing, and more time on the move than stationary. That’s not always how it goes though.

My morning commute – from Berkhamsted to west London – has a saving grace, however, which counters any other aggravation.

Next to platform three at Kensington Olympia is an allotment. It was created a decade ago on a disused part of the station and is remarkable because each plot is a pot – not a little one, mind you: each container is a metre and a half square and they come in a variety of jaunty colours.

On any other journey, I would make sure to get off the train as near as possible to the station exit. But when I travel to Olympia I get into the carriage that stops furthest away from the ticket barrier, meaning I have to stroll the full length of the allotment site, maybe 50 yards.

Sometimes – in the summer months at least – a plot-holder might be beetling about, picking runner beans or doing a spot of weeding. But for the most part, the early birds are of the feathered variety, usually robins providing a noisy commentary in competition with mumbled loud speaker announcements.

The variety of plants grown in the containers is extraordinary. Some of Kensington’s green-fingered residents are fruit-focussed: strawberries, raspberries and even blackcurrants offering summer sweetness. A couple of dwarf apple trees come into their own in the autumn.

In these colourful boxes are horticultural dreams; and occasionally signs of abandonment that hint at a personal tragedy

As for vegetables, there is a veritable smorgasbord over the course of any given year. Beans of all shapes, sizes and colours – runners, French, broad; brassicas to die for; tiddly courgettes and giant marrows; exotic peppers and salad leaves.

Some gardeners pack all sorts into a single box, and have rigged up various complex frames for their food to grow around and upon. Others appear to have surprisingly simple tastes. One grows only onions in neat rows.

Another container is filled with rosemary and lavender – perhaps designed more with butterflies in mind than providing its owner with greens throughout the year. Many allotmenteers add a few bedding plants for colour: marigolds have appeared in abundance.

Two or three boxes are neglected, and seem even sadder in spring next to the profusion of produce on either side. Bare earth dotted with dandelions, unturned and un-nurtured: promise unfulfilled.

I have walked alongside the allotment almost every weekday for the past six years, watching this little corner of cultivation sway peacefully with the seasons, sometimes dashing hopes when crops fail, and other times producing the goods to such an extent that I wonder if everything is picked.

In these colourful boxes are horticultural dreams; and occasionally signs of abandonment that hint at a personal tragedy. I feel as if I know something of the plot-holders, yet have never met any of them and seen only a few. They have been a surprising source of constancy and comfort at the start of my working day. I hope I will still think of them from time to time when I no longer make the same commute.

Lives are improved by growing things. Maybe every person should get a pot from the government at birth – if Jeremy Corbyn ever makes it to Downing Street, it might happen. Certainly we’d all get on better if we spent more time thinking of sprouts and less about Brussels.