Cultivate had a big group of volunteers again this morning at Ealing Hospital, with plenty of corporate volunteers, locals, hospital staff and GoodGymers. Carrying on from last week's session, there were 2 areas to work on:

1. Raking, leveling and sowing the next set of flower beds, close to the staff car park
2. Fixing up the bird deterrents from last week's completed flower beds

Today's GoodGymers split to opposite ends of the site, with Rebekah near the entrance, keen to repair the shiny, fluttery tapes that she and others had attached last week to scare birds away from their newly sown seeds. Chris and Sevan went to prepare the new beds by leveling the soil and removing any large things that shouldn't be there.

The shiny streamers had drooped to the ground since they were placed a week ago. The wind had blown them around and they had slowly slipped down their canes, so instead of flying over the flower beds, birds were doing that instead. Rebekah tied the strands together to make a complicated spider's web that should stay put, working her way along the existing beds.

On the opposite side of the car park, Chris and Sevan were moving soil and searching for big rocks, making Sevan think of Primal Scream for some reason. It was mostly bricks that they unearthed, with Chris declaring that he'd discovered a small meteorite too. The rocks were taken out and by midday, the soil was raked and almost ready for planting by the afternoon seed crew.

Get your rocks out, get your rocks out, honey
Rake it now, now, get'em out downtown

🤷

Four GoodGymers walked, cycled and ran to help Cultivate London beautify the green areas around Ealing Hospital this morning. They were all warmed up and raring to go, then they were led into the depths of the hospital, to the Estates office, where they went through a contractor health and safety briefing on the office computers. It covered working at heights, what to do if they found asbestos and how to get permission for digging work. Well, maybe the digging part would be relevant 🤷.

Once out of the basement and back in the sun, the task for the day was to rake and flatten some new flower beds, then scatter wildflower seeds to make this stretch of Uxbridge Road more colourful and increase biodiversity. There was big group of volunteers to help out on the various tasks, which was great.

Rebekah, Chris and Richard got going on one of the beds that needed flattening, moving sand and soil from the far side of the car park, then raking it to be smooth and picking out any big rocks. Sevan had decided to use his brain instead (for once) and was doing some mental maths to calculate the area of each part of a prepared flower bed, then working out the weight of seed and sand mix to be sprinkled on each.

Having done the hard maths, Sevan joined the other 3 as they worked their way along two more beds, making them look their best before the seed planting. The chat turned to work and job hunts, so Sevan semi-jokingly asked Romina if Cultivate had any jobs going where the GoodGymers could do more good stuff. Romina gave each of them had a grilling about any relevant skills they had, other than wheelbarrowing and raking, with a couple of possible collaborations to come.

Chris and Sevan headed off at midday, with Rebekah and Richard staying on into the afternoon to do some seed scattering and moving more soil.

If you want to get involved in improving the hospital grounds for patients, passers by and insects, sign up for next week's session here.