A green space to share

We’re supporting Healey Road Wildlife and Education Centre in Scunthorpe as one of our green space Community Champions.

Tucked away inside Healey Road’s housing estate there’s an allotment site – and it’s teeming with wildlife.

Tadpoles hatch and grow into froglets each year and bees drink nectar from flowering fruit and vegetable plants.

Hens cluck contently in their coops, sometimes sharing with wild birds nesting in the rafters.

The Friends of Healey Road Allotments invite schoolchildren to come and hold worms, snails and frogs and see how potatoes are grown.

These visits have helped inspire plans to transform scrub land on the site into a wildlife and education centre.

They’ll build a pond and net-dipping platform to help educate children about pondlife. It’ll be surrounded by a pathway with sensory boxes and a picnic area accessible for wheelchair users.

Allotment group Chairman and Project Manager Barry Cottiss said: “The money we get as Lincolnshire Co-op’s Community Champions will go towards the first phase.

“That will be digging the pond out, putting all the pathways in and a lot of the planting.

“It’s vital that things get put back into the community, and the more local it is the more relevant it is to the people who are being funded, the funders, and the people who benefit from it.

“Local is the word, and that follows on from the ethos we have as an allotment group.”

The finished centre will also benefit elderly visitors, Mr Cottiss said, who’ll be able to enjoy and pick fruit from native trees as they might have as children.

“It’s a legacy that we will be able to leave,” he added.

The project is one of 21 green spaces and environmental projects being supported by the Community Champions scheme in June, July and August.

Every time a member shops in one of our outlets, we’ll make a donation. The carrier bag levy and fundraising from colleagues will both go into the pot.

The Salvation Army has clothing banks at many of our outlets and splits money raised with us. Our share will also go towards the fundraising total.