Samia and Nicky were our mission pioneers for Kingston GoodGym visiting a lady who was looking for some help with her back garden.

When we arrived we were shown the garden which was approximately 30 foot square, but we were told that there was another 60 foot beyond that was now completely overgrown. The lady had lived there for 40+ years but due to ill health had struggled with the upkeep, however thanks to some helpful neighbours she was gradually starting to tick off the jobs that would help bring the house and garden back to a manageable level.

Neighbours had recently helped to cut back the trees over growing the kitchen and back of the house which had made a huge difference, however they had been unable to remove all of the fallen branches which is where GoodGym stepped in! Armed with our trustee gardening gloves and GG branded secateurs, we gradually snipped, chatted and chopped our way through the vast branch pile to help reveal the lawn beneath and make space to enjoy the garden once more. It was definitely a good arm work out with the sun beating down on us as we untangled the prickly branches.

We made good work of reducing the log pile and filling the wheelie bin, so much so that we were then unfortunately restricted by a lack of bins and these were quickly overflowing!! We didn’t let this stop us however and instead we switched our focus to cutting down the remaining wood into smaller chunks to help prepare for a potential follow up GoodGym mission or future neighbour visits!

As our first mission, it showed just how lonely and isolated people can be, despite being in busy communities, and how a couple or hours work from helpful strangers can provide much needed company and make a huge difference to their quality of life and well-being!

Let’s hope this is the first of many missions for Kingston! And thanks Nicky for writing up the run report 👍