Last night GoodGym Nottingham paid our first visit to the Carlton Hill Sensory Garden (also known as the Garden for the Blind). We had been given instructions by the team at Hope Nottingham, who look after the garden in addition to many other community projects and foodbanks around the city.

Our task was to do some general weeding and tidying of the raised beds and around the garden, so we got stuck in straight away with clearing the weeds and trimming various overgrown and dead plants. Some of the group also did a spot of litter picking around the garden.

As this is a sensory garden, it seemed that all the plants had been selected specifically for their sensory properties, both in terms of the way they looked and, more notably, the way they smelt. As we pruned away, we enjoyed the smells of lavender, curry leaves and many other scents that we couldn’t necessarily name but were very pleasant. We all agreed that it was our nicest smelling task to date!

It was also one of our noisiest tasks. Usually we are tucked away in a quiet corner of Nottingham such as a hidden community garden or a church yard, however the Carlton Hill Sensory Garden is right in the heart of Carlton high street which was bustling on this warm August evening. There were children playing on the neighbouring park and a crowd of people enjoying an after-work drink outside the Wetherspoons opposite.

This actually came in helpful in two ways – firstly, Peter nipped over to the pub to borrow a dustpan and (very small) brush to sweep up the cuttings as we’d forgotten to bring our own, and secondly, a passer by noticed us hard at work in the garden and ‘papped’ us, posting on the local Facebook group in celebration of our efforts before we’d even finished! This was incredibly heart-warming (especially as some of us were referred to as ‘youngsters’), and gained a lot of likes and several encouraging comments.

After an hour of work we downed tools, cleared up and transported several bags of green waste to Peter’s car as he had kindly agreed to dispose of it for us. This was a great task and we hope to return to the Carlton Hill Sensory Garden soon to continue where we left off.

Thanks to this task's volunteers Dayna, Rosemarie, Hannah, Leah, Peter, Rachel, Tom and Vytautas.

A huge well done to Tom who we had not seen since he recently completed the Lakeland Trails ultramarathon in a massive heatwave!!

We returned to Carrington Community Gardens on a sunny (but thankfully slightly cooler) evening for a second round of clearing the overgrowth. We met Councillor Nayab Patel again on arrival before setting to work. On our last visit we made a start on clearing the main pathway and this time we turned our attention to some of the other areas that have become untidy and filled with weeds and brambles.

We all agreed that some of the best tasks involve us just being able to pull things out of the ground as it gives us both a physical workout and a satisfying psychological boost. What isn't quite so fun is negotiating the thorny branches which seemed worse than ever on this occasion, or maybe our gardening gloves just weren't quite thick enough. Either way, we all got a few pricks along the way, but we still managed to fill 8 bags of cuttings and unearth some litter and a mirror. Thankfully, our work was rewarded and our minds distracted from our thorn-filled fingers by Nayab's treat bag which was once again generously filled with muffins and crisps!

As we prepared to take our group photo at the end, we were joined by two police officers who were on the beat in the local area. They were very interested in what GoodGym do and thankful that we were in the community garden to clear it up rather than set up a camp! They even helped out by taking our group photo with Nayab.

A few milestones to mention - Vytautas hs just hit 10 tasks, Matthew has now done 15 tasks and Rosemarie recently reached 20. Well done to them all! We also have Peter and Tom edging very close to some big milestones which we look forward to celebrating very soon!