What a glorious evening to be newt and aboot with GoodGym Greenwich! With 13 of us gathered and the sun shining brightly, we set off on a scenic run through beautiful Greenwich Park, with Marta managing to sneak in the final part of her interval training en route!

A happy welcome back to Jia for her second good geed with us!

Our destination was the lovely garden of St Alfege’s Primary School, where we were met with a list of garden tasks organised by Amanda the Headteacher who popped in to say hello! Between us, we:

🌱 Weeded garden beds and turned over the soil

🛶 Emptied out a boat planter and refilled it with fresh soil

🌳 Replanted a tree

🛞 Emptied and weeded tyre planters, topping them up with fresh compost

📦 Cleared out and organised some storage crates

But, you ask - what's with title of the report? Well, we also found a newt who was very sweet. Ivar may have wanted to adopt him but settled for popping him back in the pond area. One of the cuter amphibians in my opinion and a lovely surprise this evening.

Anyway, with such a great team, the jobs were done in no time and after a group pic we enjoyed a little river run back to base before parting ways for the evening, with that satisfying post-good-deed glow.

St Alfege’s is starting a monthly community gardening session, so keep an eye out for more tasks coming soon as the school transforms this space for wider community use!

Coming up next...

🎉 This Saturday we’re helping set up and close down at the Beats, Boards, and BBQ event in Charlton Park and we have gardening at Hervey Road

🏃‍♀️ Next Wednesday we’ll be meeting at Charlton House for a group run to Brooklands School for more garden work!

Until next time, wonderful people! 👋

Rachel

Sunday saw Good Gym back at Westcombe Woodlands, one of our favourite tasks and this month saw a new variation on the usual theme, namely that alongside the usual and eternal brambles we now had to remove a large number of Robinia plants. The plant is a non-native species that is not terribly good at providing a habitat for local species, including the many bats that inhabit the woods (stay tuned for news on September bat walks batfans). It turned out to be a tough old thing too: the plants were well established with a deep rooting system that all needed to come out. But Good Gym persists and after 90 minutes or so (including a welcome tea break) we’d cleared a lot of unwanted plants from the woods.

Thanks to all who came and thanks to Marta for the pun

A lovely session at Mycenae Gardens today as we tackled the ever-determined weeds with plenty of energy – and a sweet reward at the end!

We were delighted to welcome Sam to his very first GoodGym session – great to have you on board Sam, and we hope it’s the first of many!

Fuelled by sunshine the team made great progress clearing bed 4 and Arthur did a mighty job finding as many pine cones as he could. A huge thank you to one of the Friends of Mycenae Gardens volunteers for the delicious cake – always appreciated and very much enjoyed!

After our efforts, we treated ourselves to a well-earned coffee at the café, catching up and winding down. A perfect end to a productive morning.

Well done team – as always, you smashed it! 💪

Coming up:

Tomorrow: Join us for a scenic river walk – a great chance to stretch those legs and enjoy the views.

Next Wednesday we’re heading to the Memorial Hospital for our very first task there, note a 6.30pm start to give us longer to get up that hill!

Until next time! 👟🌼

Rachel

On a warm summer evening, the lovely GoodGym Greenwich crew took a short dash to Charlton Manor Primary School to lend a hand in their nursery garden. The mission? A mix of bench painting and weed-busting to get the space looking spick-and-span for the little ones.

Paintbrushes in hand, we gave the playground benches a fresh coat of colour while the rest of the team tackled overgrown patches of the nursery garden with gusto. It didn’t take long before the place looked greener, neater, and definitely more welcoming.

During our weeding adventures, we made a surprising discovery: 15 tennis balls scattered around the garden....Perhaps a mini-Wimbledon had taken place without us? (Very on-theme, with the real Wimbledon just around the corner next week!)

To top it all off, a group of curious fox cubs peeked out to watch us work, clearly approving of the transformation.

A good workout, a tidier garden and some brighter benches for the kids to enjoy. Game, set, and match to us!

This weekend we've got our river walk and weeding at Mycenae gardens. Next week to kick off July we've got a new task in the woodland garden of the memorial hopsital. Be prepared for a run up shooters hill for that one 😁

Until next time!

Rachel