A lovely sunny morning at the Ringway Community Centre, where volunteers have been creating a natural hideaway for local families and children to enjoy. Our task - clearing some of the woodland of junk, sending wheelbarrows to the skip; then shifting dead ivy and leaves to create a place for the hedgehogs to live. Hopefully our prickly friends will appreciate our efforts! It was a great morning, a pleasure to meet the Ringway team, and if you get a chance to volunteer here, grab the opportunity and come and see it all for yourself.

It was a beautiful end-of-summer day at Wildcat Wilderness today, as 8 volunteers arrived onsite to once again help with clearing a space for an outdoor classroom. It hasn't rained for a while so the ground was a little too hard to dig, but we did our very best. After helping to water the vegetables in the garden first, we headed over to the orchard area and soon got stuck in with clearing away the weeds and brambles. A couple of stubborn bits of old carpet were no match for us and they were soon removed and put on the rubbish pile, disturbing a huge colony of ants in the process. Oli continued his battle with the longest pipeline ever seen - after 2 weeks of digging we still haven't found either end to it! The search will continue next time!

As a treat at the end of the session, we had a go at using the Wilderness's new pressing machine, and pressed some of the grapes from the vine that was uncovered just a few weeks ago onsite. It made a delicious, bright pink juice which went down very nicely! See you next time!

Another lovely evening as we arrived to a busy hive of activity at Brownhill Road Baptist Church. The task was to dig up plants and take cuttings from outside of the front of the Church in order to take them to replant in another Community Garden. This wasn’t just straight up theft though, as the garden is to be totally redesigned to create a ramp for better access to the Church, so we were doing both areas a favour with this task – two deeds with one spade, if you will.

Anne-Marie told us that the Church’s gardeners were all over 70s, so across the lockdown period they sadly haven’t been able to tend to the garden. Whilst it was evident there had previously been a lot of love and care taken over this garden and rockery, many weeds had taken hold over the spring and summer, so it was a game of clambering & slashing down the weeds to find the hidden gems.

As there were so many of us, we spread out and put on masks straight away, with Anne-Marie providing helpful instruction as to which plants we should rescue and which ones were “not my favourites” 😉. We dug up everything from deeply rooted rose bushes, to lavender plants, geraniums to yuccas, and many more (that I have no idea of the names of), as well as clipping back the hedges and tidying up some of the outer borders.

A passer-by, who had been keenly watching us busily scamper over the ground, was invited to pick up a spade and join us – and so he did! As and our number grew, so did the number of plants that were being repotted and clipped, ready for moving to their new home. As the sun started to set, we downed tools and gathered together (but 1m apart) for a quick final photo. It was lovely to hear on the GoodGym Lewisham WhatsApp group that both Anne-Marie and the Church were very grateful, and what a good session it was.

I'm seriously running out of puns now for these community tasks! Any suggestions welcome...

9 volunteers arrived at our favourite place, Wildcat Wilderness, to help dig out yet more of those never-ending bramble roots to clear some space. There was one particularly pesky root which took THREE people to pull out! We are making significant progress now but there's still much to be done. Today we welcomed two new volunteers - James and Stephen. Welcome and thanks!

At the end of the session we each chose our best bramble root for a little 'flinging' contest - chucking the pesky blighters into the wilderness. There were no points for showing off as Julian's fancy technique fell short of the mark and saw instant disqualification from the competition. Take it seriously next time Julian!

See you next time!