In glorious sunshine it was a task of two halves at the Community Hospice gardens this morning.

Working on the children's outdoor play area, some of us pulled up a weed membrane to allow the soil underneath to return to nature. It took heavy-duty effort and a coordinated approach to get it up. A proper workout 💪💪💪.

Elsewhere we set about tidying up the overgrown flower bed to give a better view of the play area from the rest of the garden. After taking out a couple of shrubs and clearing the dead parts of last year's growth, we removed some substantial stones that had once been laid to create a kind-of rockery. More muscle power 🏋‍♀️🏋‍♂️!

Then, that's the idea of GoodGym, using our workouts to make a difference.

Shout out to Ashton as this was his 50th good deed. What a fab achievement in just six months since he joined 🥳🎈 !

This was the perfect session for GoodGym's partnership with WWF's Workout For Nature initiative, getting out in nature while giving it a helping hand.

There's still plenty more to do to help Jason, the Hospice's head gardener, realise his plans to transform the grounds, so we'll be back again on the fourth Saturday of each month. Do come along and join us.

Tonight we made a return visit to Hurst Community Centre, this time to clear leaves from the outdoor area used by the nursery school.

It was a proper workout raking the soggy leaves into piles, scooping them into bags, and moving the bags aside for disposal.

Thirty five bags in fact!

It was a lovely evening to be outdoors and we worked hard to finish the job in just an hour. Now it's ready for the nursery children to enjoy tomorrow.

After posing for a group photo we headed off.

It was to fab to have Greg with us, welcome to GoodGym and congrats on your first good deed 👏.

This task was part of GoodGym's collaboration with WWF's Workout For Nature initiative, encouraging us all to get out in nature while giving it a helping hand.

A few weeks ago one of our GoodGymers, Robert, pointed out a litter trap in a patch of shrubs along a footpath near his home in Welling. Today we teamed up with Julie from Discover Welling to tidy it up, then we planned to plant some bulbs in nearby flowerbeds.

Robert was away so couldn't join us, but with our litter-picking champion Ashton on the case we got the rubbish cleared up super-quickly... or so we thought!

Just as we were ready to move on to the gardening, we spotted an empty cider can lodged in one of the thorny bushes. A closer look revealed loads more empty cans - mostly all the same brand of cider - stashed into the bush. It was incredible.

Julie set off to plant the bulbs, but we decided to tackle the cans instead. While Johnny fished them out from the top, Ashton and I worked to pull them out from the bottom.

As we extracted them more and more clattered down through the branches. It was like coins cascading out of a slot machine!

We removed over 100 cans but will need to go back with a longer litter pick to reach the final few hiding deep in the prickly shrub.

Alongside the three bags full of cans, we filled three bags with other rubbish - including the usual food packaging, a shoe, a sock, and a very, large heavy loudspeaker.

It was a satisfying result, knowing that we'd refreshed this small patch of nature.

If there's a litter hotspot that you'd like some help tidying up, please get in touch.

This task was part of GoodGym's collaboration with WWF's Workout For Nature initiative, encouraging us all to get out in nature while giving it a helping hand.

On Easter Saturday we joined Annie to do some weeding at the Hervey Road garden.

We set to work, digging up the weeds on the long border and getting yes sir, yes sir, 3 bags full. We discussed Laura's upcoming trip to Mali and her rather grown up job out there - we will miss you Laura and look forward to hearing about it on your forays back to London! And Arthur interjected very regularly that he didn't want to weed anymore and wanted to go to the playground, poor little thing.

After a decent job on the long border we headed to the wildflower garden and witnessed Marta and Richard's magnificent dead hedging coming into its own. Here Annie patiently showed us what were plants and what were weeds and we got to work filling at least another 3 bags full. The conversation remained genial but little did we know, the morning was about to take a sinister turn.

It happened just as we were collecting our belongings and getting ready to go. Cat pulled a present out of her bag for Arthur. A little white chocolate chick. Awww sweet, "what a treat". And amazingly it wasn't at all melted. The first thing that happened was, inexplicably panicking that it would suddenly melt in my hands, I said "let's dig in" and promptly pulled it's head off. It's baffling really - as if I don't experience on a daily basis the things a 3 year old finds distressing 🥺 The wailing started. Quiet at first and then a crescendo to the dreaded high pitched banshee shriek. Every parent's nightmare and at which point I saved the day by stuffing a bit of the head into his mouth and he realised the decapitated bird was in fact, very yummy. More was consumed and we were all revelling in this moment of tranquility and sweetness when Cat piped up, "does it taste like chicken?" 🤯

Witty and sadistic in equal measure. Certainly disarming - in fact I forgot to get a group photo, so thrown was I by this turn of events.

A happy ending though. All the chocolate remained in his tummy even after the turns on the roundabout and we all trundled off to the rest of our weekends. Good job team!

We've got woodchipping at St Richard's on Tuesday and we're back at Prince Philip on Wednesday - hope to see you there.

Until next time!