A BASINGSTOKE gardening charity has been chosen to grow a packet of seeds that have been flown into space.

Inspero Love2Grow, which runs community gardens in the borough, is one of up to 10,000 schools and community groups to receive a packet of 100 seeds from space.

The 2kg of rocket seeds were flown to the International Space Station (ISS) in September on Soyuz 44s, where they will spend several months in microgravity before returning to Earth in March 2016.

The seeds were sent as part of Rocket Science, an educational project launched by the RHS Campaign for School Gardening and the UK Space Agency.

When the seeds return to Earth, Inspero will grow then alongside seeds that have not been to space and measure the difference over seven weeks.

The young people involved will not know which seed packet contains which seeds until all the results have been collected by the RHS Campaign for School Gardening and analysed by professional bio-statisticians.

Young people involved with Inspero will care for the seedlings, record their growth and observations over seven weeks and enter data into a database.

After all the data has been collected, the results will be analysed by professional statisticians.

Leading scientists from the RHS and European Space Agency will interpret the results and draw possible conclusions, publishing their results on the RHS Campaign for School Gardening website.

The out-of-this-world, nationwide science experiment will enable the young people to think more about how we could preserve human life on another planet in the future, what astronauts need to survive long-term missions in space and the difficulties surrounding growing fresh food in challenging climates.

Inspero chief executive and horticulturist Catherine Waters-Clark, said: "We are very excited to be taking part in Rocket Science. This experiment is a fantastic way of teaching our young people to think more scientifically and share their findings with the whole community."

Inspero run regular gardening club activities for children aged four-years-old and over, teaching young people basic horticulture skills, how to grow food, bake and cook healthy meals.