Grow Your Own

Monday 2nd March, start time 20:30, Reel Cinema, Andover 

Release: UK 2007 (Cert PG)

Director: Richard Laxton

The Family Refugee Support Project is a charitable organisation, partly supported by the Lottery, but now struggling for funds. Founded in Bootle, the Project’s mission statement says that its aims are “to improve and increase the understanding of the mental health needs of refugees and asylum seeker families in Liverpool. Supporting family functioning, increasing independence and social networks and peer support through the use of horticulture”.

According to the project’s director, Margrit Ruegg, many asylum seekers have difficulty sleeping and are vulnerable to bouts of depression and lethargy. Gardening provides structure, social contact and a drug-free path to total exhaustion.

Spuds as therapy could have provided juicy material for a really nice documentary – except that refugees and asylum seekers are unlikely to enjoy having cameras up their noses at regular intervals. But it’s still a good story: hence (the fictional) Grow Your Own.

The story starts with English gardeners bumbling along in their allotments, not quite in equilibrium, but close enough. The balance is disturbed when refugee families are given plots as part of a therapeutic process. There’s anxiety, hostility, suspicion and fear. New allotment rules are introduced and friction grows.

Things change with the arrival of an external threat from the big, bad corporate world. It is time to throw away prejudice. It is time to work together.

The film was helped by BBC funding, and some critics have suggested that this has given it a made-for-TV look. On the big screen, however, the film offers a welcome relief from the grit of recent British productions. Grow Your Own sits in a tradition that can be traced from Passport to Pimlico to Calendar Girls, and is well worth a look.

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GROW YOUR OWN

[POTENTIAL SPOILER ALERT!!]

Take a quiz team, cricket club, am-dram society or any other community institution, and with a bit of funding you’ve got the makings of a sitcom. Or a film that works equally as well on the large as on the small screen. You need a group of characters as instantly recognisable as the set-up, of course, and you need a plot of some sort, preferably one with the potential for conflict.

The institution in this case is Blacktree Road Allotments, a well-worked patch of land between industry and the docks. Our motley characters range from the despotic Allotments Committee leader and his emotionally dim son, through the cantankerous and private ex-seaman, to the jollier and more self-assured woman running the allotments stores: all comfortably recognisable.
  
The plot (story, not garden) is based on The Family Refugee Support Project, a Bootle-based charitable organisation focussed on the mental health needs of refugees and asylum seeker families in the Liverpool area. The Project uses horticulture to help families increase their independence, while also becoming part of the community. If this film is anything to go by, the process works.
  
The conflict starts when refugees are given plots as part of a therapeutic process. Despite an Iranian family having been at least partly integrated in the allotments for a year or so, the newcomers are viewed with prejudice, hostility and suspicion. An 80 year old constitution is dug up (an irresistible pun) to ensure the aliens don’t disturb the status quo.
  
The African woman and her son settle in quickly enough. The near-catatonic Chinaman and his two children take rather longer to be accepted. And when a mobile phone company comes to find a spot on which to build a mast, it’s not hard to guess whose allotment will be chosen by the despot for concreting over.

We’re shown heavy-handed tactics from the Immigration department, big business is portrayed as being callous, and we are reminded of the things refugees have to go through. But mostly, we are offered a glimpse of how things so often work in this country. Some critics have complained about the filming-by-numbers approach, but it’s part of a long tradition of British films that can be traced from Passport to Pimlico to Calendar Girls. Sure, there’s cliché and there are stereotypes, but our immediate familiarity with the characters is a kind of shorthand that allows us to get into the story quickly. After all, this is a commentary on English society, not an attempt at high drama.
  
The film was helped by BBC and lottery funding, which has led to the suggestion that this has given it a made-for-TV look. To be honest, I probably wouldn’t have minded seeing it on television instead, but on the big screen, the film comes as a welcome relief from the grit of recent British productions. Grow Your Own is put together well and tells a good story. It’s optimistic and entertaining. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Hans van Well

[Reviewer’s opinions are not necessarily those of the Film Club]