With waits for council plots in England decades-long, Roots is renting out green space – but some communities are digging in
When police arrived at the field outside Bristol in October 2023, two old cars, wheels removed, were blockading the gates. Protesters had hauled them across the entrance to stop developers building on the slice of north Somerset green belt. The threat was not housing or industry, but a company building vegetable patches.
Roots builds privatised allotments to give city dwelling customers a place to grow food. It was co-founded in 2021 by Christian Samuel, Ed Morrison and William Gay, who were frustrated by a 28-year waiting list for a plot in their area of Streatham, south London. “We thought: ‘This is crazy’,” says Samuel, 32. “‘Why don’t we just build our own?’”
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