On to the very different next garden - a group of allotments. The land is leased from the municipality for about $AU1000 per year each but the houses/shacks are purchased from the previous owner for around $15,000 depending on quality. There is no electricity or toilets so they're not really for living in, more a refuge from the high rise flats that abound in Lund. Our guide was a professor of anthropology who had spent six months in Canberra and was happy to welcome the Australians. So was the local press: we will feature tomorrow in 6 different media / photo 1 shows Linnart speaking and press photographers in the background plus Aileen and Sue.
Other allotment owners were just as welcoming and I was invited into two houses to see how natty everything is. One couple has banned mobile phones and make their allotment a technology-free zone. In another Mimi the puppy was ecstatic to have so many visitors while her owner just managed enough English to say that his lady does all the gardening.
Vegetables take a back seat to flowers and trees: it is important to Swedes to have cut flowers in the house and even better to be home-grown. As the gardens started in 1919 there are many trees and nearly everyone has at least one apple tree.
They produced a Swedish-style barbecue for lunch and soon delicious-smelling clouds of smoke were wafting over the gardens. We'd been warned by Merryle that they'd be disappointed if we didn't eat so somehow we managed it - but the day seemed to be turning into an eating marathon.
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