Five GoodGymers came to help Simon, Ruth and Bridget from Thorlands with a few tasks.

It was Tom's first time at Thorlands and first GoodGym session in a long time. Whilst waiting for others to arrive, Sam explained the vision of Thorlands and the amount of work needed to get there.

Talking about work, Ruth had a task for us before we could enter the Forest Garden to continue with the transformation of Thorlands. We took two wheelbarrows to the car park where there was evidence of Storm Eunice. A fairly newly built wall had collapsed with the extreme weather. There were bricks up for grabs!

We used the wheelbarrows to transport (roughly) 200 whole bricks and 20-30 half bricks to the "Walled" Garden, which took 4 journeys (8 wheelbarrows) to do. 💪

After spending the first 30 minutes, transporting the bricks over (which will be used to create a small outdoor oven), the team were finally in the "Forest" Garden to tackle the ivy growing on the wall and fence. The team split in half. Lucie and Tom took care of the ivy on the fence whilst Lindy and Nathan tackled the ivy growing on the wall. Sam litter picked around the area before assisting with breaking down the ivy with the secateurs to add to the compost heap.

The 40 minutes spent in the "Forest" Garden went by in a flash, but with great company, enjoyable tasks and great weather too, time does fly!

Before we left, Simon treated us to the harvest of Thorlands. We were given a sandwich bag of leafy greens and reds to have in salads.

Moorlands Gardens had just had a large delivery of woodchip arrive so we arrived on the morning after the storm to help spread it on the walkways around the gardens. The weather was surprisingly ok and the gardens were in great shape considering how other parks in the area had been affected by storm Eunice!

When we arrived, we had a quick briefing from Grant before splitting into 2 main teams: Tilly and Tom on bramble-clearing and everyone else on woodchip wheelbarrowing.

The pile of woodchip didn't seem to be going down at all for the first 30-40 minutes but sure enough, after just over an hour it had all been spread! The bramble-clearers had a tough job as it was much more overgrown than we initially thought, though we managed to discover a whole section of wooden decking that clearly hadn't been used in a long time!

As we were packing up and leaving, it started raining as if the weather was holding out for us the whole time. What great timing and thanks everyone for braving the post-storm mission!

Thanks to Dawn for the pun, which had to be explained to me (face palm)

A lovely little gang on a Wednesday afternoon, slapping some paint on the walls (and a bit on the floor...).

We met Thandi, who works with Lavender Hope, an organisation that provide after school activities for kids as well as computers for adults to use for job hunting etc. - it's great.

They're doing a massive refurb so we were there to paint one of the toilets.

We were using white paint (having debated how problematic and vintage magnolia is) and did a couple of layers with some good, some sketchy rollers, as well as some brushes for the edges.

We managed a solid 2 coats but decided it needed to dry before applying a third. Maybe next time.

Nice one Tom and Lenka - hopefully see you soon 👍