Along with Reg and Nat from Trees for Derby, a group of volunteers from GoodGym Derby made a big impact on a Tiny Forest on Saturday.

The sun was shining and the group welcomed Helen from Severn Trent for her first GoodGym session! It was fantastic to have Helen there as she had been at the planting for the Tiny Forest site so it was great to have her knowledge of the site and to provide a bit more background to it. Like the fact each Tiny Forest has been named after a Commonwealth country or nation, with the one we visited being named after the national bird of the Maldives, the white-breasted waterhen. Severn Trent created the Tiny Forests to give communities more access to green space and to leave a lasting environmental legacy of the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games. Find out more about the Tiny Forest the group helped here.

Mandy, Ashley, Grant and Rachel planned to clear the area of weeds, loosen some of the identification tags around trees and do some litter picking to tidy up the spot. On arrival, Reg requested the group helped to trim back some of the plants and focus on clearing weeds....which there were a lot of! In a joint effort, a huge dent was made in a short space of time to clear the site and get it to a stage where the trees that had been planted could flourish. Gardening gloves and leg coverings were welcomed as there were lots of thistles to pull out. Ashley had the find of the morning when he located one of the Tiny Forest tiles and looked underneath to see the insect groups that had made it their home.

We'll be back at the Tiny Forest again to help with regular maintenance and are hoping to join up with Trees for Derby again for a combined effort. Thank you to everyone for attending and helping make a big difference to this small green space in our community. The weekend held some exciting plans for the group as Helen was going to be welcoming a rescue dog into her home and Grant was going on a 100 mile bike ride on Sunday.

3 GGers made their way to West Bank Park, where the wonderful Kristina had gifted us compost for our York Tiny Forest. Wielding mattock, shovels, bags & wheelbarrows we created a hole in the gigantic compost heap in the skip. Bags were transferred to a car, taken to a holding bay nearby (ie emptied onto our patio) so the bags could be filled again (to maximise how much compost we could gather). The hour turned into 2 hours, Kristina was pleased we could make use of the compost. Tiny Forest Miki turned up and filled his rickshaw with compost and in true heroic good gym style set off to cycle it across town to Kimberlow Hill. Watch out as we might well be back for another session next week.