A £260,000 "eco-building" has been completed in The Meadows, Nottingham. The new building will be used for education and cookery sessions at the Arkwright Meadows Community Gardens, off Wilford Grove. Steve Collins, admin and finance manager for the gardens, said that the building would allow sessions all year. "The main thing it will be used for is as training and education facilities," he said. "We are going to run training programmes around healthy eating, growing, cooking and all those sorts of things. In the past we have run courses from a large polytunnel on the site, but we could only use that in the summer. Now we can run sessions all year round."

The eco-building took around six months to build and was funded by a £190,000 grant from the National Lottery, £50,000 from Wren, which distributes money from the Landfill Communities Fund, and £20,000 from the John F Mortimer fund, a local fund distributed by the Notts Community Foundation.

Mr Collins said the building had a host of features which made it eco-friendly and energy efficient.

He said: "It has very low energy consumption because of the level of insulation it contains, and we have used a lot of recycled materials creating it.

"It has got a heat recovery system and double glazed windows and probably has about twice as much insulation as a normal home."

He said he hoped the building could now generate income for the gardens, which are run by volunteers and local residents. "We are very pleased with it. It is excellent and have already received quite a few bookings."

The building will be officially opened by Sheriff of Nottingham on Saturday, May 5.