This week, we were back at St James Garden with Friends of St James' Garden to finish what we started last week.

4 runners met on hope street where we were thrilled to welcome two newbies: Mel and Mel. Hope to have you join us again soon!

As St James garden is so close to our meeting point we treated ourselves to a few hill reps before heading on over. Very impressed with all the runners for persevering!

Once there we met 7 more goodgymmers and were tasked with weeding all the pavements around the Husskinson Memoral. I think you can tell from the before an after pictures what a huge impact we had!

Thankfully the weeds and grass came up surprisingly easily - the turf almost came up like a carpet and we were able to clear a huge area. Well done to everyone!

On a warm sunny evening in Liverpool 15 GoodGymmers could be found in St James Gardens. Invited to join Friends of St James Garden's Michael and Vikky (who is also a Goodgymmer) and Lucy and Will from Shiverpool we could be found weeding the paved area around the Huskinsson memorial.

One of the great things about a session like this is it offers you an opportunity to take this time out of your day to suit what you need whilst helping out a local group. With clear directions to follow you are all in the same area but with the space to either focus on the task enjoy the fresh air and reflect on the day or to work by someone and chat whilst you weed. And that is how an hour flies by whilst the space turns from looking a little neglected and overlooked to being cared for once more and plans for a Goodgym trip to Isle of Man start to take shape (keep watching for more on this).

It was an evening of welcomes and farewells. We are so pleased to welcome Nina to Liverpool Goodgym. Nina originally with Haringey Goodgym has relocated and we look forward to seeing her more. A sad farewell to Renata as she moves away and on to the next era of her life. Please come back and see us when you visit and it was lovely to meet you.

It was also an evening of newness. Heetu led the runners through their paces on her first full session leading (Heetu is preparing for her run leader course which basically formalises what she excels in anyway). He5rtu had us running up and down the Metropolitan cathedral flight of steps making it fun and despite the steepness of the steps and the heat of the day laughter and encouragement could be heard as we all got into the swing of it step session finished we ran the length of Hope Street to the Anglican cathedral with bounds of energy and enthusiasm to start the task Well done Heetu.

This evening, as all our sessions do, showed the difference we can all make by joining together with kind intention in unity and understanding

Many thanks to Friends of St James Gardens for inviting us. We are back with them again next week.... why not join us.

A lovely task kept our goodgymmers busy on this cold - oh such biting cold - Saturday morning.

The task was requested by one of our own; Goodgymmer Vikky is also part of the "Friends of St James' Gardens" community group. As Vikky is a Goodgym member, she was one step ahead on providing all the information and made listing the task an absolute breeze, which was super helpful for Bekah as it was her first time arranging and listing a task.

St James Gardens sit in the grounds of the majestic Liverpool Cathedral, and are a much loved but recently neglected community space. The gardens have considerable historic significance, having been used as a cemetery in a previous life, and include the graves of William Huskisson, Kitty Wilkinson, and Sir William Brown amongst many others. The Friends Of group are determined to slowly but surely provide some TLC, and so we went along to what will hopefully be the first of many sessions to look after this beautiful site, which also has a natural spring used by some locals to fill up water bottles!

The main agenda was spreading out Snowdrops and wild garlic. Sian & Vikky took one side of the garden, and Sally Ann, Melody and Bekah focused on some central patches. We had the opportunity to be creative in deciding how to spread the bulbs, and made some lovely waves and shapes which we'll see when the bulbs are in full bloom. The Friends Of had provided tools including a cylindrical spade, which perfectly removed cylindrical clods of earth, so we placed bulbs in a round hole before satisfyingly popping the perfect clods back in. The group were quite taken with this system, so much so that the much-admired clods inspired today's titular pun!

After two hours of enjoyable labour, the team called it a day and were glad to head in from the cold. We look forward to seeing the snowdrops in full bloom, and will be back to help this fantastic group continue to look after these valuable gardens.