The annual plant sale at Charlton House is run by the Charlton House Garden Volunteers and CABAHS. It's always a popular event, raising much needed funds for the Community Hospice and maintenance of the grounds at the House.

Set in the lovely walled garden, we lent a hand getting things ready for the event:

🌻 Collecting trestle tables from Charlton House and setting them up in the garden.

💐 Setting up the display shelving.

🪻Fetching plants from the small walled garden to the sales area.

🍰 Putting up the gazebo for the Women's Institute cake stall.

🌹Putting out signage boards around the estate.

When it was all set up the garden looked wonderful with loads of plants ready to go to new homes (well, gardens really!)

With opening time approaching a long queue of customers had formed, all eager for the gates to open.

We left before the rush, and headed to the Old Cottage Tearooms for a coffee to round off the morning.

Last night we had a special treat being joined by two people new to GoodGym Greenwich! Robert and Nadirah, it was great to have you with us and hope to see you again soon!

It being mental health awareness this week and the theme being 'community', we discussed the communities were part of that bring us joy. These ranged from GoodGym to reading clubs to running clubs and of course, Parkrun! We headed out for a run along the River which was lovely in the evening sun and found our way to Khai who was waiting patiently on our agreed what-three-words spot. We then made our way down tunnel avenue to find a good spot for some litter picking and quickly found one. And this wasn't an ordinary litter pick, this was an extraordinarily grim one and extra kudos to all of us for getting our hands properly dirty in this godforsaken part of Greenwich! But that's the beauty of our team- we make the best of it and we made a difference after just half an hour and over 10 bags and many trips to the dump.

We parted ways at this point and some of us run back to the naval college for a quick stretch.

On sunday we're helping out at the charlton house plant sale and next Wednesday we're back at Hervey Road for some gardening.

Until next time!

Rachel 😁

It’s just a continuation of last week’s clearing the garden. Today, we did mostly pruning of Lime trees. They now look better without the overgrown parts sprouting from the trunk and roots. Thank you Annie for taking the photos.

A fired up team from GoodGym joined Clean Up Charlton members for an hour on the circuit around the retail park in SE7. Half the group tackled the usual debris in Anchor & Hope Lane and Bugsby's Way, and the rest Woolwich Road and a 'grot-spot' at the car-charging station. Now, as well as clean energy, we have a clean pavement there. Then it was a brief call to 'Frankie & Benny's Alley' which we will have to rechristen 'Popeye Lane' now - doesn't mean it has any less litter!

Thanks for a great effort to everyone who attended - you light up our life!

A beautiful day saw 7 of us help out a the lovely family fun day at Roots4Life today. Justine, Johnny, Sarah, Ashton and myself helped in the first shift, Justine and Ashton manning the smoothy bike (a great hit with kids and grown ups alike!), Johnny and Sarah on the bouncy castle, me on the raffle stall and as if it was all perfectly planned, Khai and Sarah arrived to take over after their respective tasks of building a train set and litter picking in the morning! You've gotta give extra kudos to the double deeders any day!

Great to see you all and thank you for helping the event go smoothly! The session next week at Roots has been cancelled but we'll be back to help with their growing day on the 7th June!

Until next time 🥰

Arthur's nursery had a garden day where staff and parents and their little helpers joined forces to paint fences and do a general tidy up. The place is transformed after just a few hours work!