A Sad Day IN Our Region

The title of the article read: "Allotments in Schoorldam Forbidden Area".
The story goes like this: "The allotment complex next to the Damweg (a street) is immediately closed for good".
[It seems that a type of grenades have been found there from WWII. This area was once part og the German defence lines along the North Sea...so there were poles in the ground with a sort of grenade on top of them.
When the Canadians came in at the end of the war, apparently they removed the poles and buried poles, grenades and all. Now an action has begun to remove them....but...the allotment holders will not be allowed back onto the ground afterwards.
This may seem reasonable at first glance, but I have discovered that perhaps all is not as it seems.
Apparently there was a little problem with the Rijkswaterstaat, a sort of governing body over the water works in our country (that means the shifting of water from the lower areas out and into the sea), when the big road was being built nearby the complex.
Anyway so some folks are speculating that this is a sort of "getting-back" action by them for being impeded before. Confused

]

To continue with a bit more translation:
"The detection will only be possible when the top 20 cm's (~8 inches) is scraped-off.
This coming monday [or Tuesday] the process will begin. There is too much metal bits in the topsoil for proper detectection. An estimated twenty gardners have the possibility until that time to remove their things under the supervision of the detection company's workers-- the rest [sheds,etc.] will be flattened to ground level".

This is just a snippet of the entire article that was published on friday 13 june 2008 in the "Noordhollands Dagblad". It's causing a bit of a stir locally for several reasons, which more and more seem to have less and less to do with ordenance clean-up and more to do with a sort of revenge...and the gardners are the victims.

Anyone who has gardened can somewhat imagine what it would be like to have to rip out your flowers, dig-up your lawns and veggies and leave your gardens...right as things really have begun to take off.
It must be terrible for these folks after all those years of gardening to have to totally leave and never be allowed back. What a shame...and as of now not clear as to why (they wouldn't be allowed back).

Oh well, perhaps it's good for folks to be aware that things like this happen even here in our agrarian-oriented land.
I have also read alot in the past few years about councils in Great Britian that have started taking back and closing allotment complexes as well.

I hope that is just a local spat and not a trend here.

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Sjoerd http://www.volkstuindersvereniginghoornenomstreken.nl/Page11.html

Oh no, Cactusflower! These are not my gardens. These are in another part of West-Friesland. Whew! Thank goodness.
But I find it none-the-less shocking. And my heart goes out to them during this most painful time. You know, gardners are sort of a brother-sisterhood, so it's natural that I would empathize with their plight.

I think back a month or so ago when those gigantic machines roared through many of the gardens on our complex to dig deep trenches for water drainage.
It was terrible for the ones affected, and many of us pitched-in and helped them fill the trenches again. The gardens look very good now and the folks have re-planted and will be able to harvest some crops and have some blooms after all...mostly thanks to Mother Nature and her cold wetness since that time. If it had been dry and hot...they would not have bounced-back so well.

So...No it was not our garden comple3x in that article.
Thanks for your feelings and concern.

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Sjoerd http://www.volkstuindersvereniginghoornenomstreken.nl/Page11.html