Blackwood is encouraging keen gardeners to don their gloves and grow an item of their choice – ranging from plants to flowers and vegetables to fruit.

The competition, specifically organised by Blackwood’s research and development arm, The Blackwood Foundation, will offer a selection of gifts for successful winners with prizes to be announced in due course.

The Foundation aims to be a catalyst for innovation, development and improvement for those with disabilities and places a heavy focus on the many benefits of social inclusion.

Jennifer Deed, housing services team leader, believes the competition is a further demonstration of this ethos and also explained how social stimulation can provide a positive benefit to Blackwood’s service users.

She said: “Gardening has many benefits; as well as being a very therapeutic activity, it’s also a fantastic way for tenants to socialise and meet new people.

“Already, we’ve had some great feedback and we are confident we will have many more tenants sign up to the competition soon.

“We hope the project will be a fantastic experience for everyone involved and cannot wait to see all of the entries.”

Fanchea Kelly, chief executive at Blackwood, is also looking forward to seeing the end results and believes that competitions of this nature further showcases Blackwood’s dedication to boosting social inclusion.

She added: “At the heart of Blackwood are the people, and the feedback from them is what lets us know how we can improve and adapt our service.

“Competitions like this are a great way to get everyone together and provide a fantastic social element to the day to day lives of our service users.

“We are very much looking forward to seeing the end results and hope our service users will have an enjoyable time taking part.”

Blackwood’s gardening competition is open to all residents across its developments throughout Scotland.

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