New families dig for victory, 70 years on

Penn and District Gardening Society, in Wolverhampton, whose pre-war title was the Lower Penn Producing Guild, has marked the club's 70th anniversary. The club has twice hosted BBC Radio 4's popular Gardeners' Question Time programme and its annual flagship summer show boasts 60 classes, including flowers, vegetables, homecrafts and cookery.

One of the oldest members, Bob Morris, now 86, was still fighting the Germans in the fledgling years of the new society, but the former RAF leading aircraftsman wasted little time on his return to Blighty in sorting himself out a vegetable garden at the Boundary Way allotments, where most members have plots.

Bob recalls: "There were queues of 30 to 40 people outside the trading hut on a Sunday morning in the 1950s and 60s and then interest fell away and there were lots of plots left empty. But now it's come full circle and there's a waiting list."

Bob recalls picking peas for Sundaylunch with his grandson.

"We were sitting in the veranda afterwards, popping open the pods, eating as many as we were throwing in the pot, and he said to me, 'This is the life, grandad'!"

Bob, of Bhylls Crescent, Merry Hill, adds: "It's no longer a place just for old fellows, it's a real family affair."

The Smith family joined five years ago after it was discovered that youngest son Edward, aged seven, was diabetic.

Computer programmer Neil Smith said: "We thought it would be good for him to get out and keep busy, and involving him and our other two sons in food production seemed like a good idea."

Neil and wife Jane, both 38, grow vegetables on their two-acre plot not far from their home in Willow Road, Finchfield, while the boys have fun with the wheelbarrow.

Maurice Meddings, of Boundary Way, said that after World War Two many people also kept hens.

"Farmers would let us go gleaning in their fields to collect corn for the chickens," said the 70-year-old retired decorator, who recalls teaching his young granddaughter about growing vegetables.

"She'd pretend to be Percy Thrower and I'd pretend to be another gardening expert and we'd chat away in the greenhouse. She's 28 now and telling me how to grow things."

Chairman Colin Angus told members at a celebratory evening at Bradmore Community Centre that the annual show "helps preserve a little bit of old England".