Voices from the path

Six tenants and volunteers, in their own words.

We do not pay for testimonials and we do not edit them, beyond fixing the occasional comma. The six voices below are real people who hold real plots or who give real time. Each was happy to be named here.

A half-circle of tenants and volunteers seated on rough timber benches around a small fire-bowl on a chilly October evening.

Margaret Allbright, photographed at the back door of her Forest Town home holding a wooden trug of new potatoes.

I came up for my first plot in March of 1986, when my husband died. I was forty, with two children and a mortgage and not much else. I dug for the first three months as a way of staying out of the house. Forty years on, I have only ever missed two Saturdays at Carr Bank, both for funerals.

Margaret Allbright, 78 · Forest Town, Mansfield · Plot-holder since 1986

Ade Okafor, photographed standing by his plot's small homemade plywood polytunnel at Carr Bank.

I moved to Pleasley Hill in 2021 and put my name on the waiting list the same week. Eighteen months later, on a Wednesday morning when I was supposed to be at work, Timothy rang me to tell me Plot 23 was mine. I left work and came up. I have grown more food in three years than I knew was possible.

Ade Okafor, 34 · Pleasley Hill, Mansfield · Plot-holder since 2022

Priya Ramesh, photographed inside the parish hall holding a tray of seedling pots.

I run the Schools & Sowing programme. I came to it because my own children were already grown and I missed the way a Year 4 class will ask, in dead earnest, whether a radish is a fruit. We sow a great deal of broad beans in April. Some of them even come up.

Priya Ramesh, 52 · Mansfield town centre · Trustee-volunteer since 2018

Jacob Pell, photographed leaning against the wooden door of the tool shed at Carr Bank.

I had no idea what I was doing for the first season. I planted my potatoes too close together. I planted carrots in clay. I left the slugs to a vague hope, and the slugs were grateful. By the second season I knew enough to ask the trustee on duty — usually Timothy — and by the third I was teaching newer tenants what I had wrongly assumed I knew.

Jacob Pell, 41 · Mansfield Woodhouse · Plot-holder since 2021

Stuart Wakelin, photographed at his workbench in the tool shed, planing a long timber board.

I retired from the joinery in 2014. I came up here looking for a corner with a workbench, and I found one. We have rebuilt seven sheds, re-fettled forty-two tools, and run a sharpening workshop that started with three of us and now turns out twelve on a wet February.

Stuart Wakelin, 67 · Rainworth, Mansfield · Tool Library lead since 2015

Elinor Fennick, photographed kneeling beside her freshly turned bed at Carr Bank, holding a paper packet of beetroot seeds.

I got my plot in February 2026, after fifteen months on the list. Walking onto it for the first time was the strangest feeling. The bed was thigh-high with weeds. The shed door was off one hinge. The neighbour, Mr Pell, came over with a flask of tea and a fork, and said, well, where would you like to start? That is the bit I keep telling people about.

Elinor Fennick, 29 · Berry Hill, Mansfield · Plot-holder since February 2026

A note on the voices above

None of the six people above were paid for what they said. Each was photographed by a local photographer on a Saturday morning. Each was given the printed text we proposed to publish and asked to mark any words they wanted us to change. Two changed a small phrase. None changed a fact. We will not publish a quote we cannot show to the named person first.

Six tenants and volunteers, in their own words.

If you are a tenant or a volunteer with the trust, we would gently like to hear from you.