A £5,000 lottery grant has been awarded to a gardening scheme for disadvantaged children in Birmingham.

Run by the Big Lottery Fund, the Awards for All scheme has given the money to a scheme involving children living in Aston, Handsworth, Soho, Lozells and Perry Barr.

It has been set up by the New Environmental Ventures Ltd initiative, which aims to promote environment projects, and the children will be taught about healthy eating, organic recycling and how to grow their own crops.

John Taylor, head of the Big Lottery Fund for the West Midlands, said: "One of the nice things about awarding grants is being able to get young people active in their communities.

"Awards for All aims to help make a difference to the quality of people's lives and bring the community together, and it shows what real benefits local groups can reap from small grants."

The group is one of 158 projects across the region that have shared £675,129 in the latest series of grant awards.

Neville Lilly, director of New Environmental Ventures Limited, said the aim of the project was to get children to spend more time in the garden.

"We want to motivate the children to get back to basics and encourage them to become interested in gardening and now, thanks to Awards for All, we can," he said.

"So many of them live in flats and do not have access to gardens, so we are giving them allotment plots to work on, which will allow them to pick up skills from the plot-holders."

The project is one of many recognised by Awards for All involving allotments, gardens and wildlife ponds.

Other Midlands projects include a £5,000 grant to develop an area of Walsall Arboretum and a £1,250 grant for pupils of Hob Green Primary School in Stourbridge to develop a fruit and vegetable allotment. .