18 Goodgymers ran 4km to help Thornhill Square Gardens with some summer gardening

Thanks for coming guys, welcome along to Emilie whose first time it was last night.

In the news this week:

1. 85 GoodGymers from all over the UK gathered in Stratford upon Avon at the weekend for the annual shindig, we discussed the future of GoodGym and talked new ideas. Some follow up information will be available soon.
2. On Sunday Damian led July's monthly long run in Finsbury Park area, Dom will be leading August's Long Run on 25th - see full details here.
3. If you ever spot or know of any potential tasks in Islington and beyond please let me know.

After the intro we warmed up and headed 2km via the back streets to Thornhill Square Gardens. We've been helping Anna and the brilliant community gardeners here for a number of years, they always appreciate our help. Like many local parks, council funding has been cut and the importance of volunteers is only increasing.

Our tasks were as follows:

• A team of four delicately de-headed any dead rose flowers, cutting just below the leaf means that the flower is more likely to grow back. Over the 30 minutes the team covered all four plots of roses.
• A team of six shovelled, wheelbarrowed and spread three huge bags of mulch over two plots - nice!
• Everyone else tackled a huge plot of those pesky thistles. These guys are thorny and have big roots, but armed with clippers the team cut everything back and filled four huge bags for recyling.

All the good!

Over 40 minutes we made a huge impact for our local community, well done guys! We finished by taking a group picture, having a jammy dodger and thanking Anna.

Once we'd arrived back to base we did an extra long stretch and ate more biscuits - yum!

Next week we are returning to help Single Homeless Project lift lots of woodchip - sign up here.

PB out