Citizen magazine Summer 2024 - text version - Bluebell allotments are 100 years old!

Bluebell allotments are 100 years old! 

Congratulations to the council’s Bluebell Model Allotment Gardens in Norwich which marked its 100th birthday with a celebratory event in May.

The allotments were designed by Captain Arnold Edward Sandys-Winsch (1888 – 1964) who was the city’s parks superintendent from 1919-1953.

The captain was a gifted horticulturalist who completed his training just before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, when he served in the Royal Artillery and later as a fighter pilot with the Royal Flying Corps.

As parks superintendent, he recommended Norwich Corporation, as it was then called, purchase the four fields which became the Bluebell Model Allotments North and South. The city’s largest allotment site with over 400 plots, it is tended by green- fingered residents from the Earlham, Bowthorpe and Wensum areas, spearheaded by Bluebell Model Allotment Gardens Association.

The corporation used some of the land for housing and set out The Avenues, as well as building roads, erecting sheds, planting fruit trees and laying on water. The captain was also responsible for the planning and design of many of our Norwich parks, notably Eaton Park, as well as the planting of 20,000 trees across the city.

You can find out more at e-voice.org.uk/bluebellallotments

For information on the council’s range of allotments, see www.norwich.gov.uk/allotments