A NEW campaign to renovate long redundant greenhouses at Blackburn’s Witton Park has been launched. The Greenhouse Project would see structures renovated as a ‘growing, learning, wellbeing and community hub’. The aim is then for volunteers to produce seasonal food to take home and cook so that they are eating healthily. It is also hoped that the project will enable people to have the skills needed to start growing food from their own homes. Project leaders said local organisations could also work with people at risk of food poverty to ‘encourage wider growing’. Andy Mather is Myplace Project Officer with the Wildlife Trust for Lancashire, Manchester and North Merseyside. He said: “These are a huge complex of five interconnecting 30 metre greenhouses that were abandoned over 10 years ago. They were used by the council to grow plants for the borough but then got out-sourced.
Families will be able to spend them at the borough’s markets. Paid for from the government’s Covid Winter Grant, they will be valid until March 31. Blackburn market butcher Malcolm Marsden said: “This is a fantastic idea which kills two birds with one stone.” And trader on Darwen Market Des Ingham said: “We are very happy with this voucher scheme.” The programme, partly inspired by Manchester United and England footballer Marcus Rashford’s campaign on the issue, is primarily for families with children under-19 eligible for free school meals, healthy start vouchers or those who do not meet the threshold for benefits who have been affected directly by the pandemic through job losses, furlough, or taking unpaid time off work to care for children. Support for young people not in education or training and other vulnerable adults is available.