Another lovely evening as we arrived to a busy hive of activity at Brownhill Road Baptist Church. The task was to dig up plants and take cuttings from outside of the front of the Church in order to take them to replant in another Community Garden. This wasn’t just straight up theft though, as the garden is to be totally redesigned to create a ramp for better access to the Church, so we were doing both areas a favour with this task – two deeds with one spade, if you will.

Anne-Marie told us that the Church’s gardeners were all over 70s, so across the lockdown period they sadly haven’t been able to tend to the garden. Whilst it was evident there had previously been a lot of love and care taken over this garden and rockery, many weeds had taken hold over the spring and summer, so it was a game of clambering & slashing down the weeds to find the hidden gems.

As there were so many of us, we spread out and put on masks straight away, with Anne-Marie providing helpful instruction as to which plants we should rescue and which ones were “not my favourites” 😉. We dug up everything from deeply rooted rose bushes, to lavender plants, geraniums to yuccas, and many more (that I have no idea of the names of), as well as clipping back the hedges and tidying up some of the outer borders.

A passer-by, who had been keenly watching us busily scamper over the ground, was invited to pick up a spade and join us – and so he did! As and our number grew, so did the number of plants that were being repotted and clipped, ready for moving to their new home. As the sun started to set, we downed tools and gathered together (but 1m apart) for a quick final photo. It was lovely to hear on the GoodGym Lewisham WhatsApp group that both Anne-Marie and the Church were very grateful, and what a good session it was.