We ran over 7km to clear weeds for a community garden in Thornton Heath

It was a beautiful evening down in Croydon this evening as our 10 runners headed out for one of our longer runs. We were off to Thornton Heath to help Pamela from Unique Roots in the Mayfield allotments. After a quick warm up in the usual place, Phil led the group at the front as we made our way to the allotments.

When we arrived, Pamela explained that we would be helping her get the allotment beds back in check – the recent warm, wet weather has been great for the vegetables that were planted, but unfortunately the weeds have also enjoyed it a bit too much! Pamela also explained the purpose of the allotment and how she is getting children from the local schools and members of the local community involved.

We donned our gardening gloves and got to work with the trowels. We cleared lots of bindweed (and other miscellaneous weeds) from the raised beds and admired the progress of all the vegetables that Pamela has planted – there were some particularly fine radishes! Once we were done, the vegetables looked much happier, with much more room to grow. It was great work by everyone and Pamela was really pleased with what we achieved – we even had requests for visits from neighbouring allotment holders!

We said our goodbyes and headed back into Croydon. On both our runs, the faster runners looped back to meet up with the group so that they could stretch their legs over a longer distance while still keeping everyone running together.

Next Tuesday evening’s run will see us heading to Park Hill Walled Garden to continue helping them prepare for the Festival of Peace. It’s also our monthly Croydon social at Boxpark so hope to see lots of you there!