6 green-fingered GoodGymers returned to Furnivall Gardens on Saturday morning to help out the Friends of Furnivall Gardens at their monthly session. This time, we were back on it with the mulch - all of the flower beds along the river needed weeding and top dressing, so we quickly set to work. Well, apart from Luis... who was swiftly swept away by Jayne from FoFG to help cut back all of the tall branches in the gardens. Thank you Luis for being west London GoodGym's resident friendly giant!

We mostly worked in pairs - Analiese and Liz did some pruning in one of the beds on the west side of the gardens, whilst Michelle and Beth starting working on one on the east side. Divy was helping Rachel to prune and mulch in the middle of the gardens.

Since we only had one wheelbarrow, there was a constant battle between using it to ferry weeds / turned over grass to the waste pile, and to deliver mulch to the flower beds. Michelle and Beth were on it with the mulch shoveling, grabbing the barrow at any and every opportunity! Once Luis had returned from his special assignment, he helped with the mulching too.

With six pairs of hands we had lots of man (and woman!) power this morning. We even took pause from weeding and mulching to try and straighten up the rickety wooden fence in the centre of the gardens (flashback to hammering in the one on Brook Green anyone?!) Since the gardens are due to host an event village during the famous Oxford & Cambridge boat race tomorrow, we tried out best to protect the established plants here. No doubt there will be plenty to do next month, especially after the boat race!

Divy squeezed in a little bit of planting before we posed for a quick group pic and called it a morning. Thanks to everyone for coming along - the next session at Furnivall will be on Saturday 7th May - sign up is here!