On Saturday, we had a top crew of Goodgym Islington and Harringey regulars on hand to help Frannie from Octopus Community Network with our ongoing renovation of Market Road Gardens. This was a special weekend morning "open day", timed to allow our runners to partake in their local parkrun before jogging over to help out (Simon and Emily both participated at Hampstead Heath parkrun the same morning!).

Over the last few years, our Goodgym group have been helping out with gathering green waste (leaves, thin branches, bark etc) and gathering the material into a specific composting bay found to the left of this lovely permaculture garden. These trimmings have now been converted into compost, and will be moved in to Highbury Quadrant Estate for another gardening project. Emily and Alison successfully filled up at least 12 full bags of mulch over the course of an hour, and made great headway with clearing the composting bay for new green waste.

At the same time, David, Benedetta and Victoria worked together to tidy up the primary growing beds of the permaculture project- trimming back thistles, nettles and over grown natural plants. Frannie also requested that we take out all of the marker pegs set out around the wild planting beds, so the team can replace them with some fresh string and tape.

We completed the session by placing the trimmed plants and weeds into the hügelgarden bed at the back of the space, and then covering the new composting bed with tarpaulin. We were literally tucking the green waste away for winter, ready to wake up as fresh compost in Spring!

Come and join us again next month!

We plan to return to Market Road Gardens on Saturday 4th December at 11.30am again for one more session before Xmas.

Sign up here! https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/market-road-gardens-open-day-december