HERE at the Evening Times, we’re used to our Streets Ahead campaign inspiring people to get involved in their communities.

By sharing the inspirational tales of dedicated volunteers across the city, we’re regularly inundated with more willing helpers keen to play their part – whether it’s gardening and growing or cleaning and creating.

Our sixth sensational year of Streets Ahead launched yesterday and already, we are hearing about schools, businesses, individuals, charities and community groups keen to get involved.

But we have never inspired a range of plant pots before…

Read more: Why we are backing Streets Ahead

Crafty volunteers and arty staff at south side environmental charity Urban Roots have come up with a nifty collection of new plant pots as part of their latest project.

Market gardener Colin Myles explains with a smile: “We recycled old copies of the Evening Times to create our seed pots – it seemed appropriate.”

He adds: “Now we are planting seeds for our Throw and Grow project – made possible by funding from the Evening Times Streets Ahead campaign…..”

Urban Roots – a previous overall winner and best environmental initiative in the annual Streets Ahead awards - received a £2000 Streets Ahead grant earlier this year, helping the group to develop plans for commuter workshops at train stations and projects for children.

Already the group have transformed Cathcart and Mount Florida railway station, with strawberries, rhubarb and salad vegetables growing in planters and a herb train containing everything from mint, rosemary and chives to thyme and sage.

The workshops will allow passengers to grow their own food and harvest it while they wait for their trains.

The Throw and Grow project, which will use the Evening Times plant pots, will include ‘flower flingers’ workshops where kids make little seed balls of bee and butterfly-friendly flowers to ‘fling’ at vacant, unused or derelict land, creating mini wildlife havens all over the city.

“The grant has allowed us to order a kilo of wildflower seeds and we’re planning 10 autumn and 10 spring sessions – which are the ideal times for planting wildflowers,” adds Colin.

Read more: Why we are backing Streets Ahead

Urban Roots evolved out of the Toryglen Gardening Club which started in 2004 by local people who simply wanted to improve a piece of land at the back of the tower blocks.

They held bulb planting days and gardeners' picnics, established a children's orchard in the grounds of a local school and held a plant sale.

They secured funding through the Fairshare Trust in 2007 to employ a development officer, which has helped to grow the projects and get more people involved.

It became Urban Roots in December 2008 and since then has worked with schools and nurseries, residents and other organisations on a whole range of projects, from pea-planting in Toryglen and bramble-cake making in Langside to tending prize roses in Pollokshields.

The inspirational band of staff and volunteers work hard on a whole range of projects, from teaching children how to reduce their carbon footprint to running gardening workshops for vulnerable adults.

Urban Roots are based at the Polmadie Plots, a thriving market garden that also includes beehives and raised beds tended by local people, and the Toryglen Community Base.

Now, the team of volunteers takes on lots of different projects such as transforming derelict or unused green spaces into thriving, blossoming community gardens and working closely with schools to help them develop their eco-schools programmes, biodiversity projects, climate change education and environmental arts such as murals and woodwork.

To find out more about the Throw and Grow flower flinger workshops, or to contact Urban Roots, visit the website at http://www.urbanroots.org.uk

And if the clever volunteers at Urban Roots inspire you to get involved, let us know what you are planning and we might be able to help – just email streetsahead@heraldandtimes.co.uk

As Colin says: “Streets Ahead is brilliant and the grant made a big difference to us, as we try hard to spread the message of biodiversity and encourage people to get involved in brightening up their communities.”