SHIPSTON is set to become Warwickshire’s gardening capital.

Transition Shipston, a group dedicated to making the town self-sufficient during climate change, is appealing for land for gardeners to grow vegetables on.

The group wants businesses, residential homes, housing associations and other organisations with outside spaces to make such land available for growing food.

It wants allotment holders with several plots to relinquish one to another gardener or to share one.

The group is urging farmers and landowners to provide land on which the community can grow vegetables.

It is also urging them to sell land, to Shipston Town Council, for allotments.

Transition Shipston suggested land and garden share schemes that would put people who want to grow vegetables in touch with others who have land available.

It urges people to visit the Landshare website promoted on Channel 4’s River Cottage television programme, presented by Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall.

Transition Shipston issued this plea as the council’s allotment waiting list lengthens because insufficient plots are available for people wanting them.

The group’s spokesperson said: “For those of us with green fingers, the new growing season is nearly upon us once again but for many residents in Shipston the desire to grow their own vegetables is hampered by the lack of a suitable space or land.

“The council allotment waiting list grows ever longer with no sign, in the foreseeable future, of more land being acquired to use for allotments and in any case the council is unlikely to ever be able to offer an allotment to everyone who wants one, so what other solutions could be found?

“It‘s time to start thinking more creatively and for Shipston, as a community, to consider different ways to facilitate local food production for the benefit of the health and well being of residents, as well as the local and wider environment that growing your own brings.”

Anyone interested in participating should contact Rebecca Stewart Harris by telephoning 07770 948124 or emailing becssh@googlemail.com