Young people in Burnt Oak are being encouraged to pick up their gardening tools and help make their estate a better place.

Pentecostal church The Burnt Oak Christian Fellowship will be holding its ninth annual Noise event this bank holiday weekend.

During the weekend, the church will organise groups of people to tidy up the gardens of vulnerable people such as the elderly, disabled or single parents with young children on the North Road estate.

The first 40 young people under the age of 25 to sign up for more than an hour will receive £10 voucher to spend in Brent Cross shopping centre.

Youth worker Marcus Ottaviani, who organises the project, said: “Every year between 20 and 40 young people from the estate and the surrounding area come and help the residents with their gardens. It has really brought the younger and older residents together and the gardens look a lot tidier too.

“Barnet Homes has come on board and we work with the local community to tailor the event to suit their needs. Residents complained about fly-tipping, drug dealing and graffiti – now drug dealing is no longer a problem.”

Mr Ottaviani added that this year, as well as tidying gardens, the group would complete the transformation of the alleyway behind Deborah Lodge into the new North Road Garden, which would be used by the local gardening group and children from the community centre.

Mr Ottaviani said: “The alley really needed cleaning up. It was full of stinging nettles and was used for fly tipping and drug dealing.

“Last year we dug it over. We have received £1,000 from the Mayor’s Capital Clean Up grant and have purchased lots of lovely shrubs, plants and top soil which we will use this year to completely change the alleyway.”

The group will meet at 10am on Saturday in the alleyway behind Deborah Lodge. For more information contact Mr Ottaviani on bocfyouth@aol.com