A little while ago I went with a friend to her gardening book club. I didn’t know such things existed and of course they are right up my street. Discussing books and gardening. What’s not to love?

We read and discussed Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A year of seasonal eating by Barbara Kingsolver, a book that has been out for a little while but felt quite prescient in today’s times especially if you grow it yourself. I absolutely loved it – and of course the tea and cake – and thought that I would like to join just such a group. I have looked around locally and online and can’t find anything at all like it and being a member of a large allotment association I wondered if it would be a good thing to have on our sites. The only thing is, I would have to set it up and run it and would it be more hassle than it was worth?

We could have it as an in-person group where we meet on either of our local sites in the sheds or on plots in the good weather or we could hold it online and discuss the book in our facebook group or on some other site we set up for that purpose. Or, we could have a meeting and discuss it online so that everyone has access to the discussion.

The other issue is about being able to buy the book. These days I don’t think we can assume that everyone can afford to do so. We don’t want to limit ourselves to books that you can get in the library because good as they are, the gardening section in our local library is not always the most up to date selection. I did wonder whether the allotment association would buy one copy of each book we discuss and then people could borrow it for a week, read it and then pass it on to the next person. It would also mean that the allotments start to build up their own small library of gardening related books.

Oh, what to do?