A great GoodGym team met at the Tiny Forest on a glorious☀️ day. Amy🏃‍♀️. The tasks were many and varied but quickly conquered. Water was lugged up the hill to replenish the pond. Pond plants were checked & identified. Wood chip was transported to repair the path and to the picnic area. Huge weeds were banished by hand, strimmer, secateur, spade & shears freeing the edge of the path and the Christmas 🎄 copse. The roof of the compost bin was reinforced. The compost was checked, added to & watered. Amazingly, from a barren grassy patch the Tiny Forest is now thriving (mostly surviving these heatwaves) and providing homes for a multitude of life. Todays spots included a rare clouded yellow butterfly, a toad & a mouse both living in the compost bin & grasshopper. Strangely, there was a dead bunny in the bug hotel, our detective instincts led us to believe the owl had been successfully hunting. Before we knew it, it was time to sit down under the parasol for a cuppa & Lucy's freshly baked cakes and chat. Luckily Ben spotted Becca's 🚲 flat tyre, which Alastair pumped up and🤞 her journey home must have been speedier & comfier. Thankyou all - many hands really do make light work.

3 GoodGymers turned up to the Tiny Forest as the sun shone on the daisy meadow and verdant new green tree growth. It was lovely to meet Nada Nada at her first forest session.We set to repairing the woodchip path / edging and filling in holes to make it flatter and safer. As always there was time to sit and enjoy the views. Chatter over coffee & biccies revolved round the many meanings of the word weed. In no time at all the entire wood chip heap was used up so it was time to go home.

5 wonderful goodgymers met up with a couple of Treemendous folk to tend the Tiny Forest. What a wonderful pile of woodchip awaited us at the Tiny Forest. The new and the old piles of wood chip were speedily despatched around the trees and along the circumference until there was none left. Primroses & horse chestnut were planted. Lucy planted up the pond earlier in the week. The sun shone all morning. Although the "lashings of ginger beer" were nowhere to be found, it was soon time for coffee & cake & chat & appreciation of the bug hotel inhabitants. Team Woodchip were tremendous making a huge impact. Lovely photos thanks to Nikki & Babs.

Another not so lazy Sunday morning spent shovelling woodchip. Never a team to miss an opportunity - felled trees for housebuilding were spotted, raked, bagged, wheelbarrowed and reclaimed. We're 3/4 of the way to mulching the young Tiny Forest saplings. Excellent work followed by hot drinks, sweet treats & chat. Thankyou for all your hard work.

The Tiny Forest compost heap had already been emptied into bags. These were taken up to the Memorial Garden along with excess donated trees, where they were planted. The organic matter produced by the Tiny Forest is proving very useful.

On an amazingly warm and calm morning we met at the Memorial Garden on Kimberlow Hill to plant donated trees. We followed the method of Yacouba Sawadogo who used traditional methods called Zaï, (digging pits and filling them with organic compost to trap water and nutrients) to create forest in the desert. One of us (who shall remain anonymous) was so busy concentrating on the organic matter they forgot to put the tree in! 🤣 The organic matter was a combination of Tiny Forest's own generated compost, biochar, eggshells & euphemistically malteser misshapes? We used some seriously spiky mulch to deter the rabbits. We finished the morning with a well deserved rest sharing flasks of drinks & tubs of goodies. Thankyou all.