TOP brass from the Scottish Greens were full of praise for Belville Community Garden as they paid a visit to the local project ahead of their party conference in Greenock.

Party members and elected politicians are in town today for the party’s autumn conference, which is being held at the Beacon Arts Centre.

Ahead of the summit, the party’s co-leaders Lorna Slater and Patrick Harvie were shown around Belville Community Garden and were given a chance to try some of the food grown by the garden’s volunteers.

Speaking to the Telegraph, Mr Harvie said he and his colleagues were delighted to have been able to visit the garden.

Lorna Slater and Patrick Harvie visited the Belville Community Garden. (Image: George Munro)

He said: “This shows you what a community can create with a bit of land that otherwise might have been dragging the community down if it had been left unused or derelict.

“Instead, it’s a place where they’re not just producing food, they’re producing community as well, they’re bringing people together.”

The pair of MSPs were joined on their visit by West Scotland Green MSP Ross Greer, who said the conference would be a chance for his party to reflect on the last few years.

The Scottish Greens’ power-sharing deal with the SNP ended earlier this year, bringing an end to the party’s three-year stint in government.

And while the Greens now have their sights set on the next Scottish election in 2026, Mr Greer says he hopes to celebrate their period in government at the conference today.

Belville manager Sally Clough with Ross Greer MSP. (Image: George Munro)

He said: “This is an opportunity for us to take stock on three years of massive achievement.

“There’s 12,000 young people in Inverclyde who have free bus passes thanks to the Greens.

“It was here that I had the first conversation with a teacher who was telling me about how much they struggled chasing families for school meal debt and off the back of that work I identified the level of school meal debt across the country and got the funding to cancel it out.

“That’s about £22,500 of school meal debt in Inverclyde and about 1500 families that the Greens have wiped out. These are really tangible achievements we’ve brought to communities like this one.”

The Scottish Greens have stood very few candidates at elections in Inverclyde, with the party standing in the area a general election for the first time ever in July.

But when pressed about the party's historic paucity of local candidates, Mr Greer told the Telegraph that the party hoped to start standing candidates in every Inverclyde election.

He said: “The Green vote here has grown every election for about the last 15 years, we want to make sure we speed that process up.

“This is historically an area where we weren’t as strong. That’s changed a lot recently, which is fantastic.

“We stood for the first time ever in a general election here back in July, so that was the first time people had the opportunity to vote Green in a general election in Inverclyde.

“We wish we’d had the opportunity to stand in Inverclyde West, in the Gourock by-election, but unfortunately our local branch has really only just got itself up and running.

“They put a huge effort into the general election campaign but they weren’t able to put up a candidate at the by-election.

“We’re pretty confident – certainly from what they’ve told me – that that’s the last time that will happen.”