A swift change of plan resulted in tasks being switched to make the best use of the morning considering the weather & those GoodGymers who were there. (Heslington Parkrun was cancelled & a number were helping at Knavesmire parkrun, so would be arriving later.) Leanne, Lucy, Mitch, Claire & Al tied guards onto trees to stop them being blown away. Lucy was initially in charge of the scissors & string, but as the pieces became invisible when put down on the grass we all ended up cutting our own. Quote of the morning, "Has anyone got a hard implement?" sent Al scurrying to find a hammer... Ed & Amy came along after Parkrun & tied more guards in place before popping over to see the rest of the crew at the Tiny Forest.

After a hugely enjoyable parkrun (despite the Friday night Christmas partying). Three terrific GGers helped Treemendous. Storm Darragh arrived mid task, but the victorious volunteers toiled together to plant another 500 native species saplings. Footwear quickly disappeared into the sodden clay mud but as per Monty Python, we looked on the bright side of life and so holes were amazingly easily dug and trees tightly tucked in.

After enjoying Heslington park run in the rain, 4 GoodGymers helped Treemendous York Partnership to plant 500 saplings beside the new Nursery. The sun came out and Nestlé provided a delicious background chocolate scent as convivial folk happily dug holes, chatted, planted & hammered.

Next 500 sapling session 7th December.

After an unexpectedly soggy and cold parkrun, Lucy, Jason (visiting from Leeds, welcome!) and I headed up the hill in search of the team. This proved to be rather more difficult than anticipated as the work location was out of date! After collecting some also lost student volunteers we were eventually found by volunteer Barry, who guided us back to the group. There we met Cara (who'd very wisely gone for a coffee on the way) and got started.

Our "unglamorous" task was to clear around the base of all the trees to allow them to grow better and not get swamped by grass, and to replace any broken tree guards.

After an hour of work, we all called it a day, plenty enough for a damp, cold morning, and headed home to warm up.

The next 2 sessions will involve tree planting at a new, well-rotivated site which should be very satisfying, so do come along if you can!

Four of us went along on a sunny Saturday to help Treemendous check on the saplings up at Kimberlow Hill.

This involved taking a peek inside each tree guard to see whether its occupant was still alive, then pulling out any weeds, replacing the guard and straightening the stake if necessary. It turns out that tree guards make ideal vertical ant nests - so quite a few of our trees were sharing their living quarters with these high-rise apartm-ants! However, the trees took priority, meaning we had to knock down the nests to make sure the growing tree trunks weren't smothered.

Some essential woodland maintenance was carried out on previously planted trees at Kimberlow Hill. Helping the trees and biodiversity.