The view from Akbar Nikoulari's council flat used to be memorable for all the wrong reasons: rats, rubbish, dead pigeons and occasionally the charred remains of cars burnt by rioting youths.

Then, three months ago, an allotment garden was opened between two seven-storey blocks on the infamous Rose des Vents council estate in Aulnay-sous-Bois, north of Paris.

Residents stopped tipping their waste out of the kitchen window, the rats and pigeons disappeared, and an extraordinary array of plants started to grow on the 52 plots.

Moroccan immigrants planted broad beans for their tagines, West Indians put in bonda man jack peppers, Turks cultivated Turkish parsley and Mr Nikoulari sowed tuberose, a highly scented flower which reminds him of his native Iran.

“I was pessimistic at first because I thought the kids would come and destroy the gardens straight away,” he said. “But then I realised it might just work.”

The gardeners of Aulnay-sous-Bois are part of a movement which is driving the French back to allotments once dismissed as an anomaly in the post-war world.

Les jardins ouvriers (workers' gardens) date from 1896, when they were established to give the urban poor a taste of nature. Jérome Clément, director of the French Federation of Allotment Gardens, said there were 750,000 in 1945, “but they came to be seen as old-fashioned; a place for grandparents”.

The number of plots fell to 150,000 before a sea-change in social attitudes over the past decade prompted city dwellers to take an interest in gardening again.

Mr Clement said: “As in Britain, the renewal initially came from young families who were keen on ecology, who wanted organic fruit and vegetables and who saw allotments as a statement of good citizenship.” The trend has spread beyond Gallic yuppies to reach les banlieus, the suburbs where a largely immigrant population struggles with poverty, discrimination, unemployment, violence and crime.

Mr Clement said the movement highlighted the financial difficulties gripping those at the bottom of the social ladder. “They need something to eat when they run out of money at the end of the month,” he said. “To that extent, it's a return to the roots of allotment gardening.”

In a society which tried to force newcomers into a uniform mould, a garden was also a place of free expression. “They grow plants from back home. It's an affirmation of their cultural identity.” The phenomenon is such that there is a 10-year waiting list for allotments in some parts of the Paris region.

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