This year the Isle of Wight's Adopt-A-Garden project was able to offer free training to new would-be gardeners thanks to funding from The Big Lottery Fund’s Local Food Programme.

The Adopt-A-Garden’s ‘Can you Dig It?’ scheme has trained a number of people who had little or no experience of growing their own food.

It then matched some of them up with a suitable local growing space.

These novice gardens have saved more than £240 on their vegetable bills.

Some 200 kilos of food has been grow, cooked and eaten and vegetable bills reduced by between 25% and 40%.

One student has managed to get an allotment and others have started growing food in their own gardens.

For more details of the scheme and future free training please contact Don or Ray on 82-22-82 or email don@footprint-trust.co.uk