The summer season at the walled garden is well and truly over now, and even though this was a beautifully warm summery morning our task was very much an autumnal kind of tidy up.

Basically weeding. Clearing up an overgrown grassy area, and pulling up lots of brambles.

All in all a lovely revitalising session at the beautiful space. Come visit some time 😀

8 Goodgymers spent their evening at one of their more regular haunts dubbed on the website as ‘a Secret Garden’ (in Widcombe). No, it’s not THE Secret Garden, you won’t find Mary Lennox playing there. Rather, it’s an old Baptist Burial Ground looked after by The Bath Preservation Trust, cheery! (It is actually quite lovely).

As a few GoodGymers ran their way to the Garden/Burial Ground, discussions were had around what our tasks today would be, as we had a larger group than normal. Would we or wouldn’t we be removing bind weed and brambles? How do we feel about pulling up bind weed and brambles? Suffice to say, and you won’t be surprised, we did pull up an abundance of bind weed and chopped down many a bramble. Some of us felt sad for said plants, I suppose they’d gone to all that effort to choke the life out of the other plants, and bind weed flowers look pretty. The brambles were even showing off their bounty of blackberries. We mused about uses for bind weed: could we fashion a rope? Did it have medicinal properties? Interestingly the leaves do contain a molecule that can treat hypertension and is also known to be a diuretic, among other things… so not all bad! (Thank you Wikipedia) The flowers are also important for sweat bees! (I’ll let you research those and no it’s not a typo).

But I digress… all GoodGymers assembled we took to the task assigned, with gusto, and as usual we cleared a sizeable space of bind weed and brambles within our allotted hour. Making light work of it if I do say so myself. Richard, Jerr and Ruth even managed to remove a blanket of the stuff; allowing flora and fauna underneath to be free and to grow and prosper, until the bind weed and brambles take hold again, and we will be back in a year clearing the same area! We will be ready!

Another good evening’s work team! Till next month at the not so secret, secret garden.

Odd Down let its hair down today as fairground rides and stalls took over the sports ground for its annual community fun day.

GoodGym were called in to help make sure that chaos didn’t reign in the car park. Mary was deployed spotting spaces while Ruth’s authoritative pointing seemed to have little effect on drivers determined to park as close to the venue as possible. The GoodGymers got very creative at inventing new spaces.

Wise words from Mary who warned that we must make sure there’s room for a fire engine to get through. Two minutes later a fire engine actually turns up! It came past safely, although it did have to negotiate the motorists trying to get the nearest spots. Fortunately it was one of the attractions, not sent to deal with an unfortunate disaster at the fun day.

We even managed to help with a bucket collection for three charities - Julian House, Wiltshire Air Ambulance and Odd Down Community Association, while we worked. ODCA gives grants to local charities eg paying for kit for the walking football group, funding plants for a team wanting to brighten up part of the area and supporting youth sessions for children on the edge.

All in all a good job well done - and to cap it all Mary took home a posy (because she’s worth it).