It started with a visit to the doctor who sported an upper lip as stiff as any corpse. As someone who suffers from SAD (seasonal affective disorder) and bipolar affective disorder, also known as manic depression, I had decided to take a year off from my teaching job to put my life on track. The doctor told me that if I was feeling “a bit down in the dumps” what I needed was plenty of fresh air and exercise. I was appalled; I still am, in some ways. But I ’m starting to think that he might have had a point. Here’s the year that changed my life.



AUTUMN

I’m still off work and my mate Stevie and I have just taken on an allotment. We are lucky enough to get a plot pretty much straight away. After one phone call to the local council and the handing over of the princely sum of £10, it is ours for a year.

Quite whose idea it was to take on this disused lump of land in Twyford, Hampshire, is difficult to recall, mainly because the decision was made over a couple of beers and because neither Stevie nor I is willing to take responsibility for what is obviously a ridiculous notion. We have plenty of time; Stevie works flexible hours as a mental health support worker and we are prepared to give up evenings.

But we know nothing about gardening, nor are we prepared for the level of pain we will have to endure to claim our very own Eden while reclaiming some physical fitness, and perhaps even a small shard of sanity. Days later we are sitting at the top end of our very own 1,500sq ft plot — roughly the size of a tennis court — taking a tea break after tackling the first stage of a gardener’s year: digging up weeds and their roots. For five minutes. And we both begin to whimper at roughly the same time, a combination of creaking backs and discovering which end of the fork is which by painful trial and error.

But I experience something new. I find myself smiling through the blisters and twinges at the surprising pleasure that this combination of physical toil and connectedness with the earth and companionship brings. I don’t remember feeling “good” during autumn before.





WINTER

Most previous winters in my memory have felt like some kind of retribution, perhaps as an admonition for having had such a ball in the summer. As the season drags on I become increasingly short-tempered, which then translates as guilt for being hell to be around. In the past I have staggered and lurched, blinking, dazed, pale and physically depleted, into spring, gasping for light and warmth.

This year it’s all different because of the physical fortitude and increased empathy with the seasons that gardening provides. For the first time I feel that I might leave winter with a spring in my step. Why hadn’t anyone told me about the healing and restorative powers of gardening? I once asked my mother, who has been gardening for centuries, exactly what it was about horticulture that was so fascinating. All she said, somewhat obtusely and in an uncharacteristically Zen kind of way, was: “One day you will understand, dear.” Maybe it’s just something you have to figure out for yourself. Whatever it is, I feel as if I should be shouting from the rooftops about the salvation of sanity and the redemption of the body — with a spade.

It’s not just me, though. The other day I was up at the allotment with my two boys, Gabriel, 9, and Dylan, 5. Their interest in the plot has grown slowly over the past month or so and this particular trip has been suggested by them. Just as I am squaring up the potato bed, Gabe looks up from his digging and says: “I’m having a great time, Daddy.”

It’s mid-January, the day is as cold and grey and uninspiring as a damp school sock and here is my son beaming, simply because he is digging. My boys have put up with me in some of my deepest pits of futility and misery. Maybe they reckon that anything that makes a miserable old git like me a little sunnier might have something to it after all. Whatever the reason for their enthusiasm, one of the most satisfying things about the allotment is that it has become common ground for me and the boys.





SPRING

Stevie and I are at the plot to perform an activity for which all the others — digging, making our shed, talking drivel — have merely played a supporting role. We are about to sow some seeds and we are scared. Having been such brave frontiersmen, we are terrified at the prospect of getting it wrong. We are suffering from PVT, pre-vegetable tension.

There is, however, some justification for this.For us the plot has become an entity that represents far more than the sum of its parts. As well as the calloused hands and throbbing lumbar regions with which we have blessed this soil, we have also placed in it our own peculiar brand of faith. Not only a faith in nature, but also in ourselves. We decide that any vegetable that refuses to grow in soil which has received this kind of treatment is so churlish as to be inedible anyway. So we sow two rows each of onions and carrots. Good companion plants apparently: the scent of the onions will deter the carrot root-fly and carrots will, I’ve read, make onions generally more considerate towards others. Then, growing in confidence, we set about potatoes and peas, sweetcorn, runner beans and leeks.

After six months of digging, aching, sweating, freezing and laughing, we have, in part, done what we set out to do. Not only have we removed a tangle of overgrown plants, but we have put some decidedly intentional ones in their place. Whether they will amount to anything is anyone’s guess, but the fact that we have got this far without deciding that gardening is a waste of time makes me sense the beginnings of some kind of harvest already.





SUMMER

Despite being not in the least superstitious, the success of our endeavours at the plot has come to be somehow analogous to that of pretty much everything else in my life. Justification enough for me to hand Stevie the fork when it’s time to dig for potatoes. He slices and levers the soil, and the dense green foliage leans away from the fork’s prongs.

There are certain unforgettable joyous moments. Barring the birth of my kids, I’m not sure I can remember one as momentous as watching Stevie unearthing 14 off-white and surprisingly clean tubers. I proceed to dig up a further 12 spuds, which is, as we wander home in the early evening sun with a 13-fold increase in potato ownership, and given our previous supermarket mentalities, remarkable. It also strikes me that I have achieved a similarly exponential growth in self-knowledge, self-worth and self-confidence.

Later that evening we barbecue the potatoes and eat them smothered in butter and dotted with chives from the garden. The boys are forced to admit that root vegetables are, in fact, edible, while I chew on a different sort of discovery, that the allotment has been, in no small part, my salvation.





Allotted Time: Twelve Months, Two Blokes, One Shed, No Idea (Sidgwick & Jackson, £12.99), by Robin Shelton, is available from Times Books First at £11.69, free p&p. Call 0870 1608080 or visit www.timesonline.co.uk/booksfirstbuy


WHAT’S THE EVIDENCE? DR TOBY MURCOTT

Can exercise make you happy? It means getting more exercise and getting more sunlight, both of which have been linked to alleviating the symptoms of depression. A study of 439 patients over 60 with varying degrees of depression, conducted in the US in 2002, showed that both resistance and aerobic exercise improved the condition significantly.

And in the long term? The effects seem to last. A study in the United States following 156 elderly people after a course of exercise therapy found that ten months later they were still reaping the benefits.

Does it help manic depression sufferers? There is less evidence for a direct link between bipolar disorder (manic depression) and exercise. However, a review conducted by researchers at the University of Liverpool, published last year, suggested a connection between lack of exercise and a worsening of the disorder.

And if you have SAD? The connection with seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is much clearer. Researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill published a big review last year examining the evidence from numerous trials. Although they were critical of many of the studies, they concluded that regular exposure to specifically designed artificial light — much brighter than standard interior lighting — did help. Even a weak winter sun is dramatically brighter than standard interior lighting, so it could well have an impact on SAD.

Dr Toby Murcott is a former BBC science correspondent

CAN YOU DIG IT?

Visit www.nsalg.org.uk, the website for the National Society of Allotment and Leisure Gardeners, for further information and to find an allotment in your area.

For general advice on getting started and top tips on how to manage and to get the best from your allotment, log on to www.allotments-uk.com

If you live in London, don’t get your hopes up. Many councils, such as Camden and Islington, have waiting lists of more than ten years. To check for news of spare plots and waiting-list times, visit www.londonallotments.net, which connects allotment communities in Greater London. There is hope for the residents of Croydon, South London, which has vacant sites.