Future looks rosy for Salford gardeners

The future is looking rosy for green-fingered gardeners in Salford who now have room to grow.

The Grow in Brought’on community gardening project has doubled in size after moving to a new location on Heath Avenue in Lower Broughton.

The new site, which is located next to the Humphrey Booth Centre, opened to huge fanfare on Saturday, December 13 when residents turned out in their droves to find out more about the project, which is run by Salix Homes in partnership with Groundwork.

The Grow in Brought’on project is a community growing scheme providing members with mobile planters to grow their own produce. It is run from a ‘meanwhile site’ which is a derelict piece of land used for a community project until future development begins.

More than 100 people attended the festive themed launch event where revellers enjoyed making Christmas wreaths and got to meet special guests – Queen Elsa and Olaf the Snowman from Disney favourite Frozen.

David Oldroyd, chairman of Grow in Brought’on, said: “The aim of Grow in Brought’on is to provide people with the skills and opportunities to grow their own produce and provide a sustainable food source. Whether you’re a gardening expert or just a beginner everyone is welcome here, so it was wonderful to see so many people at the launch event eager to get involved and start growing with us.

We are thrilled with the new site, which provides us with twice as much space and the facilities needed to expand the project, so I’d like to thank Salix Homes for all their support.

Grow in Brought’on is now at its third home after relocating from Meadow Road, and Mocha Parade in Lower Broughton prior to that in 2012.

The new site is bigger and better than ever providing an additional 40 planters, the majority of which were snapped up by locals at Saturday’s launch event. There are also plans to open a bee apiary at the site next spring so members can produce their own honey.

Sue Sutton, director of customer and neighbourhood services at Salix Homes, said: “Grow in Brought’on is a wonderful community project that we are very proud to support. All the members have taken great pride in cultivating a fantastic community growing area and we hope the new site will enable even more people to get involved, helping to build an even greater sense of community spirit in the area.

The launch event was funded thanks to a grant from Salix Homes’ ‘Your Salix Your Say fund’ and the housing provider also secured a £50,000 grant from regeneration consortium Procure Plus to fund the creation of the new site.

A Learn to To Grow course will take place at the site in the new year. To get involved call Georgina Neild on 0161 7798989 or email georgina.neild@salixhomes.org