About Us

Pine Walk Allotments is a self-managed Allotment Association with all allotment management being devolved to local allotments in 1982. We are affiliated to Bromley Allotments and Leisure Gardens Federation (BALGF) and through them we actively support, promote and enhance the use of allotment/leisure gardening facilities.

Pine Walk Allotments Association has an active committee, responsible for the running of the site. Committee members are all volunteers, and together with our fellow plot holders we seek to cultivate our plots and help with the maintenance of our communal areas.

As well as individual plots, we have a communal area, easy-care raised beds, a toilet, a communal cabin, a picnic area, a polytunnel, a well-maintained and secured tool shed and multiple green waste areas.

We all learn from each other – those with experience pass this on to new tenants. We all want the best for our Association and most importantly we want to have fun working our plots! 

Plot holders cultivate fruit, vegetables and flowers. In addition we have plot holders with chickens, pigeons and a bee keeper. Plot holders maintain the site communal area as well as their own plots, with regular working parties to help clear old overgrown plots and mow shared paths and verges. 

We have a watercourse running through the site. It is shown on old Ordnance Survey maps in the 19th century as being a tributary of the River Quaggy and it fed into the boating lake in Scotts Park. The watercourse is still there and is now an Environment Agency rainwater surface runoff channel that we maintain on behalf of the Council and the Environment Agency. 

We are committed to blending the use of the soil with ecology and biodiversity, and have some wild areas that promote insect and bird life. We have an annual survey of the wildlife on the site, and it is good to see the list getting longer each year, with notable highlights being moles, stag beetles, frogs, toads, newts, slow worms, 14 different butterflies and over 35 different bird species.

History of the site

Pine Walk Allotment is a unique site in the Borough of Bromley. There are four privately owned sites, three on church land, and then Pine Walk. The land belongs to the Vane Eden family and is part of the Cromlix Estate (there is still a Cromlix Close in Chislehurst at the side of Coopers School). The London Borough of Bromley leases the land from the Cromlix Estate and then, in turn, leases it to the Pine Walk Allotment Association.

The land has been agricultural for centuries, and in 1954 it was first leased to Bromley to be allotment land. It was originally to be called Orchard Road Allotments, but that name was already allocated to a separate area of allotments on the site that is now Scotts Park School, so at a meeting of the Bromley Council Allotments Committee on 2 July 1954, the name of the site was agreed as Pine Walk.

A lot of the original plot holders were ex-servicemen and the site was very much a social meeting place as well as an allotment site. There were regular Sunday morning meetings and a bell (an old artillery shell) was ‘rung’ at 11 o’clock, calling plotholders together for tea. This often led to a procession to the Red Lion nearby, where discussions on all things growing were continued.