Celebrating GoodGym Richmond’s 7th Birthday on 18 July 2023.

A solo mission to plant 18 Geranium x Johnsanii ‘Johnson's Blue’ around the seven park benches in Buccleuch Gardens that we adopted during Great Big Green Week back in June.

As well as seven newly planted benches, there were plenty of other sevens to celebrate:

The Seven Wonders of Buccleuch Gardens

1. The Arcade Rockery. Eat your heart out Nebuchadnezzar and your Hanging Gardens.

2. The Arcade . Our contender to rival the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus? This Grade II listed brick shelter that houses our tool store was constructed on the foundations of Buccleuch House in the 1930s.

3. The Mouth of Hell. Instead of a statue of Zeus, Buccleuch Garden’s has it’s very own entrance into the Underworld. You can descend into Hades by taking the grotto tunnel that links Buccleuch Gardens to Terrace Gardens underneath the Petersham road.

4. Colossus Trees of Buccleuch. Learn more about the some of the beautiful, historic trees in Buccleuch gardens by following the ‘Richmond Trees’ trail: https://www.richmondsociety.org.uk/celebrating-richmonds-unsung-geen-heroes/

5. Temple of Aphrodite under the Petersham Road. I think it is Aphrodite rather than Artemis. The relief , inset behind bars to the right of ‘the mouth of hell’ shows a portrait bust of a beautiful goddess, held aloft by two winged puttis.

6. Eileen’s Café, once a vandalised public toilet, now a beacon of coffee and cakes with a string of lights illuminating the way.

7. The Three Pigeons Insect Hotel. Why fly to Cairo and gaze at the pyramids when you can gaze in awe at this GoodGym monument, created by the hard labour of many runners?

Seven Swans a Swimming (3 missing)

Seven Sleepers(6 missing)

The legend of the ‘seven sleepers’ involves seven Christian boys who were persecuted by the Roman Emperor Trajan, then escaped to a cave and slept there for 309 years, waking up during Byzantine Christian rule.

Seven Dwarves

Back in June when we started our bench transformation project during ‘The Great Big Green Week’, we named the seven park benches after Disney’s seven dwarves: Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Dopey, Bashful and Sneezy.

7 Marvels

The lovely café in the nearby Poppy Factory, which was hosting an open day on Tuesday 18 July. https://www.poppyfactory.org/