Charly and Ben met up in Manchester city centre to embark on a litter picking trail through some of the green spaces in Ardwick 🌳

After a short run to Gartside Gardens, we made a lap of the park, picking up litter as we went. In the high winds, lots of apples 🍎 were scattered around the park from a couple of apples trees 🌳 After filling a sack of rubbish 🗑 and enlisting the help of locals, we moved up to the Hanworth Close allotments, where we found lots of discarded clothes, condoms, butchers dog food, and lots more besides.

More was to come, with the narrow ginnels, alleyways, and footpaths containing some fly tipping, including rugs, pillows, and several Barbie figures, but also the normal plastic bottles and tin cans 🥫🍶🧴

A final collection in the Groom St and Grosvenor St areas gave another few sacks of rubbish, making sure to empty any bottles that still contained liquid.

7 full sacks plus several other large items collected in all. Good collection from a few green sites, particularly following storm Floris.

Good session with Smithfield Garden Club, clearing lots of litter from an area near The Wheatsheaf in Northern Quarter 🚮

Welcome to Tyla for the first time, joining a bumper group for a rare Wednesday night task.

Louise and Phil were in charge with Robert, landlord at the Wheatsheaf, also lending an able hand. We got bag rings, gloves, bin bags, a makeshift sharps bin, and brooms with dustpan to do a loop of the area.

Some notable collections:

• battery 🔋
• mattress 🛏
• hoover
• various clothing 👖
• lots of broken bottles, glass, cans

We also trimmed one of the communal beds and had an introduction to the amazing work the local group had done to develop the area, including some of the planted areas that were looking good 🌳🌱🍃

Welcome to Charly for their first GoodGym Manchester outing!

This week's session moved to Thursday after a change in plan from Katie. We were out on the allotment this week with a list of tasks:

• Remove bind weed (an endless task...) 🌱
• Install the fencing
• Plant out tomatoes 🍅 from the poly tunnel
• Weeding and laying membrane
• Laying woodchip

Peter was in his element with plants and brought along some squash to plant in a little pumpkin 🎃 patch.

We installed the fencing, weeded like demons, and laid as much black matting or membrane as possible using pegs to secure down. With a tonne bag of woodchip, we emptied the bag to leave a healthy layer covering a part of a communal area.

Finally, we watered what we could and cleared up before heading home.

Really productive task despite the heat 🥵 and Katie was really happy with the progress. We'll be back.