'Twas the afternoon before the big GG 10 year party when an email pinged into my inbox, containing a last minute request: could someone please set up a community mission for the next day to help out Stine and Hubbub? With half an hour to spare between finishing work and heading to the GG party, I coaxed my fingers to work as fast as they could typing the details of the mission, uploading it to the website and disseminating it to the local GG groups (hooray for social media!).

The next day was bright and sunny as I made my way to the mission during my lunch hour(s), proof that Friday 13th can only be a lucky day :-) No one else from GoodGym was unfortunately available as this was happening during a work day, but when I arrived at the Learning Lab in IKEA I stumbled upon a packing human operation that could rival the Dover-Calais border checks!

The aim of the mission was to help pack some planting packs, which would then be given away to Londoners during the weekend. This is part of Hubbub's campaign #Give It A Grow, one of their campaigns to help people bring nature into their lives by creating a green patch at home!

In true IKEA spirit to honour the borrowed location, operation #Pack The Packs started with assembling boxes from flat packed cardboards, then putting a round pot into each box, adding a "coir" brick (word of the day, google it!), then some bulbs and seed packs (parsley, basil and wildflower mix), and finally a leaflet explaining what the campaign was about and giving tips on how to plant the seeds and bulbs. The pack was completed when we put a lid on it!

Two hours flew by and the number of boxes grew by the minute, the work aided by music and some good chat. The team was down to the last items to make the packs, so I called it a day and headed back home for the final stretch of the work week!

And I got to take home my very own planting pack!