The Small Harvest Handbook

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking for some statistics about the average UK garden size, and I found some interesting ones. According to the 2015 media pack for the RHS The Garden magazine, a document that is aimed at attracting advertisers to the publication, the 380,000 RHS members the magazine is sent to have gardens that are 10 times larger than the UK average, covering over half an acre.

The UK’s flagship gardening TV programme, Gardeners’ World, was first broadcast in 1968 from Oxford Botanic Gardens. Since then it has had a tradition of broadcasting from the lead presenter’s (gargantuan) garden. Alan Titchmarsh’s Barleywood covered an acre. Current host, Monty Don, has two acres at Longmeadow.

Meanwhile, a 2015 survey for the Horticultural Trade Association (HTA) found that the average UK garden size is just 14 sq.m. If you’re under 44, the average is 12 sq.m. For those over 44 you get 15 sq.m. For ease of comparison – an acre is just over 4000 sq.m. (so you can see there are very large differences in estimates of the ‘average’).

This could explain why a survey conducted for publisher DK this year (about which I received a press release) found that two thirds of British gardeners now grow plants in pots rather than borders. Despite this, 21% have a fruit or veg patch and 30% have fruit trees or bushes.

Whilst some people find statistics fascinating in their own right, I collected these with a purpose. British gardeners tend to hanker after The Good Life, a smallholding or a Victorian walled garden. Whilst we all still want to Dig for Victory (with the modern enemy being climate change or global corporations), the truth is that we’re being increasingly squeezed into small gardens (even allotments are being split to