The prospect of a return to the GoodGym bosom loomed large on Saturday morning, an expectedly brisk winter's day was met by 10 of Newham's finest. I arrived at the gardens, had a good old catch up with Mel and Brad, then thought "where the hell is everyone?", we quickly realised we were standing like lemons at the wrong gardens, 30m down the road was the real Permaculture haven. An oasis of calmimg green hues, a fluid design structure in harmony with natural systems, a charity that connects urban dwelling youngsters with nature....a place to drink mulled wine and talk nonsense with our mates.

Kieran's a bit of a fountain knowledge, having worked restoring ecosystems all over the world, he's now plonked himself in Bow, to the benefit of the locals. We had multiple groups doing their own tasks, some trimming /cutting back tress and bushes. A drilling team, not quite sure what they were drilling, definitely something into something else, it looked important. A clearing team, never to be underestimated (they can get tetchy). High calibre carpentry also occured, securing a large plank of wood to seperate a bed. Onions were planted too and netting was tied down to keep out cunning squirells.

Blimey, when you write it all down, you did quite a bit!

Concluding the task standing around a fire, drinking mulled wine and having a giggle was just the ticket. A dose of normalcy, it just so happens that our normalcy is absolutely class. It's easy to forget that, personally as I haven't been able to come along every week, like the 'before times'. A highlight of my week for my sure, hopefully you can say the same.

See you all again on the quiz, this Thursday 17th December. Message me if you have problems with the word doc sign up.

Till then

B

Siobhan, Aaron, Holly and Helen.... what a team... I was there too.

There was a two-man job needed on the signage, requiring an artistic touch, Siobhan and Aaron to the rescue! Flawless attention to detail, no hesitation to start again if the colours went a bit astray, and tireless googling for fun facts about the crops. Helen and Holly got to work clearing to pathways of detritus that had built up over the last couple of weeks. And I used some netting to covered up a patch where some seeds had been scattered so birds couldn’t eat them all (crucially without stepping on the patch, for an extra dimension of difficulty), and secured one side of the compost box thing to make it more difficult for little people to pull it down and hurt themselves.

Congrats to Holly on her first GoodGym Newham mission! (I think that’s right).

Kieran (who runs the gardening session) set us home work to watch “kiss the ground” on Netflix - documentary about how soil can save the world.

That’s all I can think of! Well done all!

Three intrepid explorers delved into a secret garden on the 22nd day of August. Storms had ripped mountains of leaves from the trees. Those dead leaves served no purpose scattered as they were, so the first priority was to scoop up the pile and deposit it in the compost containers.

Job number 2 was “mission wormary”. An abandoned bathtub was identified as an ideal addition to the wormary section of the garden, and the remnants of a picnic bench had the potential to be repurposed as a frame for the bathtub to sit in. The first challenge in this exercise was freeing a toad that was stuck under the bathtub. A sheik wedding procession would only briefly distract the team. Then moving the bathtub and soon-to-be-frame into position allowed us to see how the frame needed to be bound together and then reinforced with the salvaged wood collected in the tool shed. Precision sawing and meticulous design work from tori and pheebs respectively resulted in a robust, fine-finished product, tailor made for a bathtub full of worms.

Well done all! Beautiful work.

We arrived at our brand new community mission to be greeted by the very knowledgeable Kieran who runs the Charity Get Out.

The charity focuses on working with young disadvantaged people to give them an opportunity to connect with the natural world through outdoor learning, surfing and permaculture projects. The garden at Malmesbury Primary School is one of these projects and Kieran gave us the grand tour of their garden which is impressively established having started it less than a year ago, he enlightened us on the world of perennials vs annuals and the different permaculture techniques they are using to grow a vast array of vegetables and herbs throughout the garden.

After the tour we were set to work clearing part of an overgrown section of the garden to allow more sunlight to reach the vegetable patch. Graham set to work giving the Wisteria a much needed trim whilst chatting to the kids who were searching for resident toads. Siobhán chopped back the dogwood before Aaron set to work sawing the whole tree down, brute strength required to yank the entangled gnarly beast from its spot. Meanwhile Goodgym newbie and Bow resident Hazel set to work collecting the cuttings and transporting them away with the wheelbarrow, great teamwork all round...we hope you'll come back for more Hazel!

With the tree removed and foliage cut back, the sunlight flooded in....the kids weren't so sure about the whole tree being removed but hopefully the veg will be grateful, Kieran seemed to be, and gave us some home-grown cucumber and kale to take away for our efforts.

We said cheerio, promising to return in a few weeks to lend a hand and also learn some more about growing and composting. We finished the afternoon with a much needed beer in the sunshine, cheers!