Apart from a few sunny days recently, at GoodGym Brighton it feels like it has not stopped raining for sessions and sessions. But did you know that going for a walk on a rainy day can be Good for you? Rosemary found the BBC article on How rain can make you happier and healthier and so, even this week, 9 happy GoodGym-ers went out running to help Manor Paddock social housing, where the resident Luc was waiting for us with a number of well organised tasks.

Manor Paddock House is an unusual-for-Brighton red brick and red tile dwelling nestling in a dell of the once Manor farming land, close by today to the Royal Sussex County Hospital and at the bottom of Sheepcote Valley. The House was built in 1932 but was converted to eight seniors' social housing flats in 1979. The communal garden area is flanked on two sides by stone wall, once stable walls: leftover from the previous era of Manor Paddock being a grazing field for military and racing horses (now a space for dog walkers and astro-turfed, floodlit sports pitches).

The House residents - especially the gardeners amongst them - are really grateful to Good Gym for helping, twice a year, to keep the weeds in check in this sycamore and birch-shaded, partly-wild garden; for planting bulbs and plants; for mulching fruit bushes, plus a pear and an apple tree, in Spring, and then pruning buddleia in Autumn.

We are all so lucky to enjoy this historic green space, and run to the Paddock where the horses once did!

Welcome Josh and Rosie. Hope you enjoyed this session, and were not so discouraged by the rain :-)

Yesterday afternoon the sky cleared just on time to provide us with good conditions for our autumnal gardening session at Manor Paddock, one of the senior residential housings that we served in Brighton & Hove. As usual, resident Luc welcomed us well prepared and massively thankful for the GoodGym superpower offered – without which the job would take him ages to do!

Several were the tasks needed, all done within less than an hour at the light of our powerful (more or less) headtorches! Planting bulbs, reshaping lavender bushes, weeding scrubs, collecting foliage, pruning buddleias and taking care of tomatoes plants’ beds.

Whom's running, whom's easy pacing because a doggy knee or cycling because of a stiff back pain (me, sigh!) … all we came and went off in full action!

Something to add to my gardening culture: Buddleia, also known as butterfly bush, is a perennial, semi-evergreen plant. Once it has flowered, it only loses its foliage for a short period of the year. The flowers of a buddleia generally appear from July to October. It's a robust shrub but can quickly become untidy if not pruned, with the flowers appearing so high that only the butterflies can enjoy them. Annual pruning keeps it in shape and helps produce more flowers, lower down.

Let’s see the results of our “pitch-perfect” buddleia pruning and lavender shaping next spring, shall we? 😊

(Literally) Directly from Italy with love, ... two-hours-delayed flight later … (grrr)…, I managed to arrive on time for our Tuesday group run to Manor Paddock House, a B&H council residential home in Kemptown with flats and bungalows and social activities including the management of a communal green area, nicely taken cared by its residents.
Our friend Luc welcomed us with well-prepared tasks to fit everybody, including the trimming of some grassland by new memberLucy who arrived on foot carrying a borrowed tool from the Brighton Tool Library. Welcome to newcomers Edel and Michael who followed me running, and Rob cycling, all happily swingling up and down local footpaths and parks in Kemptown before reaching our destination! Rebecca bit us on timing, digging already into a flower bed to make space for the new plants! Another fun evening that ended up with some gifted lavender to zest our return journey… just much colder than in Italy, and wet-ish… I guess the new plants will be happy 😊

Followers of the Legendary Monty Don and Gardener's World will know it is now the time of year to cut back in the garden. Luc from Manor Paddock welcomed us into the residents' fantastic gardens and put us to work! Going back to the roots...

There was Lavender and Budleigh to be trimmed and dandelions to be pulled up as well as weeding. The smell of the cut flowers was stunning in the Autumn evening.

With so many head torched Goodgymers it took no time at all to get Luc's gardening jobs done! And, seeing as this was our last Tuesday evening run for a while, we headed to the pub to work our biceps and triceps(!)

After welcoming back Michael (me!) to the Good Gym community, we set off for this week’s destination – the grounds of the Manor Paddock Seniors Housing Scheme. Our run took us up the steep hill of Edward Street and then along Eastern Road, passing Brighton College and the Royal Sussex Hospital on our left and views of the terraces running down to the sea on our right.

When we arrived, Manor Paddock’s resident, Luc, showed us around their beautiful grounds – a green and flower-filled space, with rose bushes, honeysuckle, and unfortunately a whole lot of weeds! Luke explained that, while the council came to mow the grass, everything else that needed caring for was left to the residents.

The headline was: weeds out – mulch in! So we quickly set to, with rakes, forks, trowels and a lovely mixture of compost and earth. Tara and Katharine got their mulch on at the North end of the garden while the rest of us gave the grounds a good old makeover.

Many hands make mulch work so, before the hour was up, we’d cleared and fed all of the beds, even finding time to plant some gooseberry and clementine bushes. Tara then led us through a quick fitness session, where we all surprised ourselves with the number of sit-ups we could do in three minutes, before we headed to the Sidewinder in Kemptown for a well-deserved pint (or two!).

Welcome to Brighton Goodgym to Daniel, great to have you along for your first run and good deed!

We started our run as a four, got caught in the nick of time by Rebecca picked up Katharine & Amroalong the way and by the time we got to Manor Paddock we were the magnificent seven!

Manor Paddock is a council run senior’s housing scheme with a garden looked after by resident Luc. Much of the garden had been taken over by onion bulbs which Luc had removed and our task was to replace them with a selection of nice bulbs including narcissi, crocosmia and tulips. Armed with dibbers and trowels we set to work and were advised by Luc that dibbing was best! Meanwhile Daniel & Amro competed for top spot in the Great Brighton Rake Off and bagged up loads of leaves from the lawn to make compost.

A quick fitness session of ramp sprints and squats followed, and eventually some of us actually warmed up!