We welcomed new GoodGymmer Jo this sunny Sunday morning, at one of our regular and favourite gardens! Excellent teamwork made short work of our task of chopping down Cardoons and then arranging them in the flowerbed, so they can seed themselves over the winter ready for next year's growing. We then moved onto pruning hedges to make a bird box accessible, and help maintain the garden. In between all the pruning, we took the time to admire the wildlife friendly pond, which GoodGym helped to give a new lease of life to earlier this summer. We even spotted a dazzling dragonfly enjoying its new home :) photo credit Meyrick and Kathy. Our host Kathy then very kindly brewed up some 'tea of the garden' for us to enjoy, just as the rain came down! Thanks Meyrick and Jo for your hard work, hope to see you at the next mission!

The regular volunteers at Alice Park Community garden were pleased to welcome back 4 GoodGymmers on Sunday... Meyrick did a great job raising a water butt to allow water flow, Max worked hard shovelling compost while David got chopping to process fallen tree branches. Emily and David then had a mindfulness-like task of stripping leaves from the branches - we were left with a wheelbarrow full of compostable leaves and several ladybirds were rescued in the process :)

Wow, this warm weather is really something. And one of the best places to experience it is at the Community Garden in Alice Park.

Only three GoodGymmers were able to make it, others I guess may be on holiday. However, the magnificent three of Cosmo, Aaron and Meyrick were issued with instructions as usual by Kathy.

This time it was to address a problem caused by visiting humans. It would seem that the lure of the apples growing on their trees was too tempting to some and they were being picked. As we all know though, apples are not ripe until later in the year, no matter how luscious they may look on the branch...

To protect against humans, we were asked to cover the apple trees with netting, making sure that it was tied safely to avoid potential trip hazards.

With the how we had, we more or less finished. There was a final section we couldn't finish in time, but it had been complicated by the only remaining netting left being not really fit for this purpose. In order to make it work some form of primitive engineering was required, and we just ran out of time.

Nevertheless, let's hope our efforts have saved the lives of the majority of the apples from the scourge of humankind, and they live to see a more productive life journey.

The sun was shining, the flowers were in full bloom, the weeds and hedgegrows had grown rapidly and the garden needed a good water.

Arriving at Alice park the team set to work at pruning the overgrown hedgerow by the bug house. This consisted mostly of ivy and sycamore tree.

With just one hour for the task, the team spent about 50 minutes pruning and 10 minutes chopping up the clippings to sort into compost and non composting piles.

We welcomed first timer Vicky; we hope you enjoyed your time with us and we look forward to seeing you again soon.

Just two Goodgymers were free to help in Alice park on Sunday. The weather was perfect, dry and not too hot or cold. We helped put up bunting to prepare for a festival and then set to work on levelling some tables so that they could be used to store seedlings.

Meyrick and Helen made their way to Alice park in the glorious sunshine to help at the community garden.

First job was to take down the bunting from a previous event. Meyrick climbed the ladder whilst Helen ensured it didn't topple over.

Next job was to chop up clippings from the gardening ready for composting. Using garden shears we chopped away trying to avoid all the creapy crawlies that were making their escape. Next Meyrick moved composted clippings into a new store, whilst layering with our fresh clippings as apparently this helps create the right environment for composting!

Another great job done and a great start to a Sunday.