As Grid technology matures and emerges from e-Science research as production systems such as the National Grid Service (NGS) and Campus Grids, its potential user-base will expand. Some of these user communities such as Bioinformatics and the Social Sciences rely on well-established software solutions involving R, Stata and Matlab. These applications do not easily fit into the typical grid environment. There is also a need for integrating heritage applications written in Fortran, C and C++ into the Grid in as seamless a way as possible. To find an efficient solution for these communities, a prototype lightweight client-side toolkit called GROWL (Grid Resources on Workstation Library) was developed by CCLRC Daresbury Laboratory. Growl uses a client-server model to interface to existing Grid Services from applications written in Fortran, R, C and C++. GROWL is being further developed as part of the JISC-funded Virtual Research Environment (VRE) Programme by a collaboration from CCLRC Daresbury Laboratory and the Universities of Lancaster and Cambridge. The project will produce additional wrapper services (in particular for Stata and Matlab) and produce demonstrators in the fields of Bioinformatics, Computational Chemistry, Materials Science and the Social Sciences.