Our New Roots programme funded by DEFRA placed St Ann’s Allotments at the heart of a revolution in green workforce development, enabling us to bring together local unemployed residents and provide specialist skills and training opportunities.
This in turn helped create a more skilled workforce and benefited the site as the training has taken place on plots, hedges and buildings on site.
Through the project we were able to offer free green skills workshops and talks to St Ann’s Allotment gardeners and local people.
This project also enabled us to create our Starter Plots scheme, which offers smaller, accessible plots to those who have little or no experience gardening but wish to take on an allotment, or those who want to downsize.