Come and join us on a tour of amazing wildflower garden projects and planting nurseries in the Islington borough!

7 Goodgymmers (including new starter Joseph- welcome!) joined Area Activator Simon this Monday evening for a unique group run and community mission combo. We met at Elizabeth House Food Hub on Hurlock Street and discussed our weekend activities (a few of us attended the incredible Night of the 10,000m PBs event at Parliament Hill Track on Saturday- report for the evening coming soon!), before engaging in a warm up and a 1 mile run to Highbury Quadrant Estate.

Upon our arrival, we met with Frannie, the lead gardener, volunteer coordinator and powerhouse for the awesome Octopus Community Network gardening group. She invited us into "the meadow", a lovely hub for neighbourhood growing and planting and demonstrated the in's and out's for effective watering of the 3 main gardens along the estate (the meadow, the orchard and the allotments). A team of experienced gardening volunteers usually help with the maintenance and upkeep of these gardens, but find that their time is often taken up by watering plants and setting up hoses or sprinklers, when they could be helping with more technical tasks. Having a few additional helpers to water the plants over summer would make a world of difference!

After an extremely thorough breakdown of the quirks of hoselocks, water supply points and effective watering techniques, Frannie hopped on her moped and drove off across town to Tufnell Park Plant Nursery. The Goodgym crew also set off in the same direction by passing the Arsenal Emirates Stadium and Holloway Road. Tufnell Park Plant Nursery is a wonderful space for growing new plants, bushes and fruit trees, with the use of propagation stations and a large green house and poly tunnel. Our future tasks would involve keeping the soil in the nursery saturated during the Summer months, and looking after the peach trees, runner beans, rocket (which is delicious- see above photo!) and other greenery.

All in all, the evening was super informative, and we will look forward to signing up to more tasks very soon!