2 GoodGym-ers helped out at Maryon Park Community Garden today. Our mission was to help get the area tidier ready for the Urban Harvest Open Day next Saturday. Our tasks included sweeping away fallen leaves from the paths & tidying up with Edna in the polytunnel used for growing seedlings. We were supervised by a friendly Robin who has made the garden their home, and finished the task with a crash course in the rules of cricket from Tim! Everyone welcome at the open day next Saturday 14th September.

A wet blustery Autumn day in July saw 3 GoodGym-ers meet Tim and Edna at the community garden in Charlton's Maryon Park. Our first task was to clear some worn out rugs from the Art Therapy green room, much to the annoyance of some resident spiders(!) We then moved onto turning over the compost bin - which is more of a mixing up process so the dryer, stringier plant material gets mixed in to the compost. Something essential to keeping the variety of plants including flowers and fresh veggies in good growing conditions. Finally, a cuppa and a chat at the end of the task left us ready for the rest of the weekend.. Thanks to all & see you soon!

The first Saturday of the month means a Goodgym morning at the lovely Maryon Park Community Garden in Charlton. 4 of us were greeted by a hill of woodchippings followed by chat with Tim & Edna about the task ahead, which was to re-locate the hill up to the forest school area beyond the allotment plots. Shovels at the ready, we and some brilliant MW volunteers got to work, wheelbarrow races ensued and soon the mountain had become a molehill, with the woodchippingy mulch raked over the area it was needed and any leftovers spread around the plots. We were super lucky that the rain held off & the sunshine was on our side, and even more lucky to be rewarded with tea & biscuits after the task. Thanks to all involved & have a great Bank Holiday weekend! 😊

Two tasks, two robins and two hosts were waiting for Good Gym as we turned up at Maryon Park community garden to be met by the wonderful Tim and Edna.. The team split in two, Sarah and Johnny set to work turning a big old pile of compost whilst Marta and Julian got on with chopping back a large overgrown bush to create a lighter space for the garden's beans to flourish in. The two robins were much more interested in the compost, possible due to there being a smaller risk of being cut in half by wayward loppers. An hour later, the compost was turned and the bush had been pared back significantly and so it was time for team, biscuits and pizza.

It rained and it poured today, despite the forecast of "light rain" from 11am. But a bit of water ain't gonna stop this crew from doing good on a saturday morning! Some of us fresher than others from our mornings of park running, time keeping, feeding a friend's cat and stopping Arthur from breaking the TV, we got to the pile of mulch awaiting us. The task is simple but hard work and we know this from having done it several times before:

Get rid of the pile of mulch.

-Stuff it in your pockets

-Chuck it in the pram

-Sell bags of it for £10 a pop

-Throw it at innocent passers by

Sadly not - it involves shoveling it into our wheelbarrows for the painstaking walk up to the top of the garden to the Forest School, tackling slippery steps, Arthur standing right in your path, and Edna insisting you stop for a cup of tea because it's too wet. If you're lucky enough to get to the top of the garden, whoever is raking the mulch out politely directs you to the perfect spot to unload your barrow and boom your load is lightened for the treacherous path back down...to do it all again, lots of times.

Well for everyone else. I had a cold, wet and unhappy two year old to get me out of the majority of it and judging from the pictures all the mulch was spread out in the Forest School by the end of the session, in time for everyone to enjoy the lovely spread Edna puts on for us all.

It's certainly a good work out and a very satisfying task, with a lot of gratitude from Tim and Edna.

Great work team. We'll be back first Saturday of each month!

It was nice to be back at Maryon Park Community Garden on Saturday, always a Good Gym favourite. There were a couple of tasks to be done: a polytunnel and some beds needed to be emptied ahead of plantings, the sad act of taking down Christmas decorations was required, and finally there were a lot of mucky toys. Two of us got to work on the emptying. one to the tree and one to fitting a hose to start cleaning the toys. After a while it was just the toys to clean with one of us hosing and two of us scrubbing and all three of us getting wet (the Christmas tree packer cleverly managed to stay dry). After an hour the toys were looking good as new and after a little tidying it was time to take advantage of the generous spread that Tim and Edna always lay on for us.