The evenings are drawing in and this was probably our last natural light Wednesday session of the year. We were back at The Children's Allotment to do battle with the longest, fiercest, thorniest brambles I've ever seen. Before the onslaught, we warmed up by moving a few years' worth of accumulated rubbish into a skip; this part of the task was accomplished quickly.

The brambles, not so much. Long, thick, scratchy, entangled in the trees and other "good" vegetation. Our best efforts made some headway but they will no doubt regroup ready for our next battle in the Spring.

After a group snap in the yurt we celebrated the end of a great summer of GoodGymming with a drink in The Magdalen Arms.

GoodGym Oxford made a triumphant return to The Children’s Allotment after several years away. It was a gorgeous, sunny evening with a breeze that made the summer heat much more manageable than recent weeks. Because it had been so long since our last visit, the site was brand new to most of us. We were thrilled to welcome three fantastic new recruits - Simon, Hannah, and Celestia who jumped straight into the action after our run out from Richard Benson Hall.

Our host, Vita, had a long checklist ready to get the community space back into tip-top shape. The team quickly split up and crushed a variety of physical jobs. We shifted timber, lopped back overhanging branches, weeded raised beds, and cleared out thick patches of prickly brambles and nettles. We also collected windfall apples and damsons and dragged out piles of broken, abandoned paraphernalia to clear the site for an upcoming skip removal.

With the hard work done, Vita invited us to vote on how tonight's session had influenced our personal well-being, with apples! It was a wonderfully creative, grounding way to reflect on the power of community and fresh air before our run back to base. An absolute powerhouse of a session and we promise not to leave it as long 'til our next visit.

It was lovely to be back at the Children's Allotment for the first time since they opened up last autumn. It was quite a different sight than when we first came to help out back in the spring of 2019 - now there's a polytunnel classroom, mud kitchen, running water, loo, lots of produce thriving in raised beds, and barely a bramble to be seen.

This week we were back on wood chip duties...the play mound needed making safe by covering with weed suppressing fabric and a thick layer of woodchip. A few bits of glass and metal had been making their way to the surface so the nice thick layer of woodchip will ensure that the area is much safer for playing. Elsewhere Mark and Julia sharpened their carpentry skills repairing the mud kitchen work bench, a handful of GoodGymers were given a composing masterclass, and everyone else snapped on the gardening gloves and got weeding the polytunnel raised beds and around the raspberry canes. Watering was done, peas were eaten, and a generally wholesome evening was had.

Welcome to GoodGym Oxford Emily!

Thanks to Ben for the excellent pun/report title!

It is always a joy to go to the Children's Allotment and today was no different.

Alice and her team are busy putting the final plans in place for the grand opening at the end of October and needed a bit of Goodgym pixie dust sprinkled over a fee jobs.

Enjoying some surprisingly hot autumn sunshine we leveled off and membraned some area of the polytunnel in readiness for some new raised beds. The entrance to the site was also spruced up and tidied (all worms disturbed were given a new home in the compost area), kale was planted and compost ferried across the site.

We ended our task with some acrobatic apple-picking and were sent on our merry ways with apples for crumble/cake/juice etc.

Group runs are baaaaaack

A few of us celebrated the return of group runs by jogging to the Children's Allotment, tin of flapjacks in hand! Baked goods are always required to celebrate milestones, no matter how disintegrated they get on the journey over! Well done to Lorenzo and Sarah on your 50th and 100th good deeds!!

Tonight we returned to one of our favorite spots The Children's Allotment. We have loved coming here over the past few years and it is fantastic to see the progress of the site, and so exciting that it is nearly ready to open!

Alice set us to work weeding areas of the site, cutting back enthusiastic plants (ivy, brambles), shifting wood chip and painting the shed and new compost toilet structure. We discovered interesting spiders (the Fake Black Widow with its round bottom, the Kardashian of the spider world maybe?!?), accidentally gave woodlice a blue tinge and marveled at the plants in the snazzy new poly-tunnel.

A warm welcome to Jules and Matty joining us for the first time, we hope to see you again! And a huge thank you to Alice for allowing us our repeated visits and being so welcoming and joyous!

Another fabulous session completed at The Children's Allotment. This week we were able to admire the new polytunnel, complete with lovely new doors. It's been a long time coming, thanks to COVID, and it looks (and smells) brilliant.

As usual we had a warm welcome from Alice and her blackboard of tasks. This week the focus was on weeding, clearing grass cuttings, watering various areas of the allotment and laying down weed membrane and woodchip (our favorite!), and clearing the mud and weeds from the concrete path.

In true Goodgym fashion we all got stuck in. Long grass was raked and collected, bind weed was untangled from trees, strawberries and herb plants, raised beds, trees and grass seed was watered and various bits of rubble and rubbish was loaded into the skip. We also managed to lay down lots of weed membrane and started on the wood chipping to hopefully keep more weeds at bay!

It is always remarkable what a team of Goodgymers can achieve in just over an hour and we even managed to sample strawberries from a bed which we planted up in April!

A big well done to Matty on your tenth good deed - maybe the quickest new to 10 we've had so far, and thanks for your education on bugs!

Welcome to Aaron, Isaac and Claire. It was so lovely to meet you all and we hope to see you all again soon!