Another beautiful day at Charlton House & Gardens with residnet volunteers around to help and guide 🙄 The garden master, Jason, is also running around with his cup of coffee telling people what and how to do things here... with love and compassion, of course. While one GoodGymer was tidying up outside the house, another one was caught in dilemma of human selectiveness of what is weed soon discovering that bulbing and weeding on a cold morning requires more clothing. The result is: 🧹Fronts done 🌱 Weeds out 🧅Bulbs in

Two of us from GoodGym joined the regular CABAHS volunteers at Charlton House for some gardening today, helping to spread aromatic woodchips to create lovely pathways through the Glade.

We had so much fun! Even though the rain cut our session short to just an hour, we still managed to chip in and make a difference. Every little bit helps!

Another do good, get fit moment in the bag!

Great session, great company, and plenty of woodchip puns!

On a sunny but cold October morning (belated signs that Autumn is definitely upon us), 4 GG'ers made their way to the walled garden next to Charlton House. The reason for the gathering was to help the resident CABAHS volunteers with their annual plant sale. This event is high on the CABAHS agenda, with proceedings going to the Greenwich & Bexley Community Hospice.

As soon as we arrived, we were greeted to the sounds of "We can stop lifting the heavy stuff, GoodGym are here to help!" - good to know that we carry such great reputation! Not wanting to prove the shouts wrong, we quickly set out to carry as many plants in boxes, crates and makeshift containers as we could to their respective pride of place for display to any interested buyers.

Such was our dedication that we were done in 30 mins, leaving us time to admire the plants and even make some phone calls to flatmates to entice them to buy the fruits of our labour. We hope the plant sale is a treemendous success!

It’s that time of year again to get our bulbs in the ground and prepare for a blooming brilliant spring! Most of today’s task involved planting Narcissus ‘Paperwhite’ bulbs. Three GoodGymers — Aidyn, Cici and Cathy — joined the fun to plant along the long border.

Thankfully, the soil was nice and soft, making it easier to dig the six-inch-deep holes needed for our bulbs. Alongside the planting, we also squeezed in a bit of general garden maintenance.

There was an extra ray of sunshine in the session, too! I was wearing yellow, and blended right in with the Helianthus — practically becoming sunflower myself! Haha! Talk about being ray-diant! 😄

Overall, GoodGym, good company and another blooming lovely day. Oh, happy daze! 🌼 Dreaming of spring blooms, we’re already looking forward to seeing our hard work blossom. Every bulb planted is helping create a greener, more colourful garden for spring.

Hopefully, more of you can join us at our next sessions! Until then, see yah!

Cecilia D🍀/Cici

Charlton House and Gardens welcomed a mighty team of two yesterday, as a last-minute volunteer pairing, whose name is Šana, arrived ready to bring some help from Newham.

Šana and I could be found chatting, drinking tea, taking photos of each other and generally creating the impression that we'd signed up for a content creation mission rather than a gardening one.

Behind the scenes, however, some surprisingly productive work was taking place.

Equipped with a shiny wheelbarrow and pair of garden shears, Šana went off to tackle the overgrown bushes surrounding the open space garden, filling an entire wheelbarrow or two with cut thickets and staying longer than Aidyn on that day! Aidyn was somehow teamed up with a couple of local CABAHS volunteers headed into the wilderness area armed with a trowels and a bag of 500 bulbs! Battling thick and wet grass and stubborn ground, we managed to plant staggering half of that never-ending bag!

Meanwhile, the mountain of greenery removed by my teammate, Šana, helped tidy up those bushes!

The photographic evidence may suggest we spent the afternoon posing dramatically and documenting our every move, but the final tally tells a different story:

🌷 c 200-250 bulbs planted in the wilderness area in conjunction with CABAHS team! 🌿 One wheelbarrow packed full of cut thickets removed 📸 Countless photos taken for "proof" ☕ Cups of tea and plenty of banter consumed

A successful afternoon at Charlton House and Gardens proving that, with enough determination, it's possible to be both productive volunteers and photo queens at the same time (proven before countless times)!

It was my first time joining the volunteers and seeing Charlton House & Gardens, everyone was very welcoming and asked what task I'd prefer to do.

We split into two groups with Aidyn joining the bulb team and me and few others cutting back ready for the next lot of bulbs to go in on the other side.

Time went very fast and it was already 11am tea break, we had already got quite alot of work done "Many hands make light work as they say" We was joined for our tea break by the resident cat Casper. We returned to finish tidying up for the last half hour, it was a really good session.