Watering in Buccleuch Gardens and around St Mary Magdalene in Richmond to help young plants get through the heat wave. And adding some Florescent topped canes to enable others to mark the places for others to water over the next couple of weeks.

Friday 11th July afternoon planting mission in GoodGym Richmond’s sponsored plots in Buccleuch Gardens to plant out over one hundred plants grown from seed.

32 degree temperatures really not ideal so lots of watering integral to this task and lots of watering missions likely to be listed over the next couple of weeks to ensure that people and wildlife can look forward to swathes of honesty, angelica, salvia, dianthus, zinnia, cornflower, lobelia and more .

A mission to water new planting at St Mary’s Church in Richmond wasn’t quite as successful as hoped but lessons learned.

GoodGym Richmond’s environmental hero Ken MacKenzie has been working with GG Richmond and all sorts of other local groups, volunteers and Duke of Edinburgh Scheme participants to improve the green spaces across the Borough including the historic Church of St Mary Magdelinr in the heart of the town.

Today’s session was a bit like a Space-X rocket that exploded on take off. My Mission was to water new planting around the War Memorial and the newly fenced wildflower beds. On the first attempt I didn’t have quite the right tools. Returning 15mins later (with a useful Philips screwdriver) I was able to do some watering but I had to abandon the mission prematurely when I discovered I had left my phone at home on charge (Doh!). Back at St Mary’s shortly afterwards there was only enough time to put everything away.

The heat may have been huge, but the desire to GoodGym on a Monday eve is bigger!

Starting with a warm up in Richmond, we headed across the green and down to the river to run across the lock and back along the river on the north bank into East Twickenham, turning in to St Christopher's Fellowship.

We are very familiar with the garden there and get on with weeding, litter picking, cutting back and sorting out without needing instruction! The brambles had been weaving their way around everything and weeds were clearly loving the heavy rain followed by sunshine, until we turned up!

45 minutes later the large garden felt more under control again, even if our own temperatures were not so much!

We are back there next month to keep on top of the summer growth.

Five GoodGymers came out to St Mary Magdelene Parish Church in the centre of Richmond to build some hurdles. We welcomed 2 new GoodGymers on their first mission with the same name: Jamie. Anita was at the War Memorial getting the beds ready for planting and Ken was on the other side struggling with some new sticks to make them into hurdles around the wildflower area. Jamie (both) got stuck into cutting sticks and sharpening the ends while Emily set about making holes on the posts for the sticks to go through. It was a hot day and while we made good progress finishing some bits off there will be more stick work on Monday as the task was not completed but a good effort was made.