This morning five GoodGym'ers from Bath spent the morning at Newton St Loe working with Grow for Life in a garden which is used for therapeutic horticulture for those suffering with anxiety, depression and isolation.

For the first hour we were tasked with creating compost beds which will be used to plant a whole range of fruit and vegetables including rhubarb, cabbage and lemon balm which we were planting today. We split into teams to tackle this, with Jane and Jer filling the gaps between the beds with wood chip, Meyrick and I filling the wooden frames with the compost to make up the beds, and Ellie had the all important job of compacting and smoothing the compost beds so that the wooden frames could eventually be removed.

After a drinks break, Ellie and I began to plant the lemon balm plants in one of the newly created beds whilst Jer, Meyrick and Jane were on heavy lifting duty, shovelling large piles of rocks form one corner of the site into large trenches that needed filling to provide foundation for further work. To finish, Ellie and Jane cracked on with the somewhat tedious task of removing sellotape from cardboard which is placed under compost beds to stop weeds growing through.

After all was complete, we were rewarded with a number of vegetables harvested in the garden itself, a worthy reward for the morning's hard work!