24 people ran 5k and helped an local gardening group to weed, dig and shift

This Monday Islington's spiritual, physical, and 'aerobic motivational' leader Simon was away (resulting in a lack of biscuit based refuelling), and was replaced by Camden man.....me, Shaun.

This week we headed off to Grenville Gardens to help FROGG (Friends of Greenville Gardens). Take a look at this blog to find out more about how they are transforming the area. It's a fantastic spot and volunteers Jessica and Sarah are doing a great job transforming this public space.

Root and Branch

Over the last few weeks we have been helping to dig out some tricky roots from a patch of land outside the park. Eventually children from the local school will create a wildflower garden in the area- it will look great. So, armed with forks, feet, hands and a pick axe 8 hardy runners went straight for it. It wasn't easy as even the pick axe struggled with one tough little blighter.

A further 6 people grabbed spades and headed for the compost patch. It was starting to become a little unruly with weeds starting to take hold, so Jessica asked if we could turn it and manoeuvre it out out of the way. This was tough too (we sadly lost a broom in battle) but in 30mins we had pushed it all back out of the way of the path.

The rest of the team grabbed the hand tools and went for the weeds with gusto- deheading dead dafodils, pulling up dandelions and clearing a space roughly the size of 2 Ford Cortinas. Unfortunately for the ladies we almost made a dreadful discovery.....Japanese Knotweed. Looks like we might be back for more weeding if that takes hold.

Run to the Emirates

With time running out we headed to the Emirates Stadium and back through to Highbury Fields. Quite frankly it would have been rude not to push ourselves a little harder on the way home so we stopped for a few 'out and back' intervals. On the way home a few people took a small wrong turn (what do you expect from me- Im from Camden), but we made it back in time for a quick stretch and a biscuit (thanks Sarah M) before we headed off on our way.

Nice work y'all