Despite the recent mild weather, today brought us a grey and cool morning. Nonetheless, five keen GoodGym-ers met at the Roots4Life community hub, joining lots of their regular volunteers. For anyone who hasn't heard of it, Roots4Life is a brilliant charity set up to address the physical and mental health challenges that come with malnutrition and social isolation.

After a welcome from the task owner Cat we set about the first activity. This involved carefully digging up (poisonous) daffodils that had been planted in the raised beds alongside the garlic and potatoes. We made light work of this, and soon had all of the daffs transferred into individual pots ready to find new homes away from the vegetable patch!

After this, things went downhill (literally). At the other end of the site a trench had been started ready to plant some hedgerows. Unfortunately, as the land is under the water table, it had become rather flooded. So the first job was to drain out the worst of the water using watering cans, buckets, mugs... pretty much anything we could get our hands on really!

Once this was done, we planted the seedlings in a neat pattern, while trying to avoid sinking into the bog ourselves. Varieties included blackthorn, crab apple, dog rose, elder and wild cherry, in the hope that the hedgerow will become a foraging and cooking educational experience, as well as providing a vital habitat and food source to wildlife. There was then another bed near the community hub which also needed planting, but thankfully that was a lot less boggy, so it didn't take us long at all.

Finally, there was just time to have a quick cuppa and a slice of bread and butter pudding to bring our energy levels back up before saying our goodbyes. In total, almost 180 saplings were planted this morning so a really brilliant effort all round - well done everyone!