OLD gardening skills and traditions will be kept alive through a new allotment project in West Malvern.

Age Concern plans to get West Malvern pensioners out and about growing their own fruit and vegetables on a special allotment.

The allotment in West Malvern will include a community shed and tea-making facilities and it is the hoped the allotment will become a social meeting place, a place to chat and swap gardening tips as well as grow vegetables.

Project co-ordinator Jenny Robinson, a keen gardener herself, explained that there was a lot of gardeneing knowledge and experience in the older generation and the project would tap into this.

“We’d like the allotment to be a meeting place and we’d like to organise talks and encourage people to teach each other old-fashioned skills like jam making and preserving,” she said.

She said the project was about growing and eating healthy food and about keeping old traditions alive.

The Age Concern project received a small lottery grant to be used over the next five years but since the idea was raised at West Malvern parish council earlier this year many local people, companies and organisations have got involved and the allotment project has been given landscaping materials, a greenhouse, soil improver and a water butt.

Mrs Robinson was particularly grateful for the help and support of Malvern Hills Lions Club and said she could not have managed the project without them.

The steep 40ft by 80ft site on the West Malvern parish council allotments has been cleared of brambles and weeds and raised beds have been constructed. Although there is still work to do, including a seating area, cold frames and a tradional vegetable bed, the project will be up and running next spring and the first vegetable crops will be planted.

Raised beds and handrails will make the site easy to use for the elderly and Age Concern want volunteer drivers to help some elderly residents get to the allotment.