On a perfect sunny March morning Jacqueline, Luana and Steve met our mission host Sue to help out at Marsha Phoenix Trust - a fantastic organisation that provides supported housing for homeless young women.

Today we would be helping out with a few tasks to keep ahead of the peak of gardening work as spring gets into swing and everything starts growing like crazy. Welcome Luana for her second ever GoodGym session - we hope to see you soon at a group run!

Luana and Jacqueline got to work weeding, tidying and dead-heading some plants while Steve Joined Sue to dig up an enormous (phormium? Sue knows everything about plants and it was hard to keep up with all of the names!).

As the sun shone down and post-run legs started to relax while Goodgym upper body muscles engaged, we made great progress by the time Sue provided a round of tea and biscuits. One final push to extract the (I think…looks it up online... yep I’m pretty sure it’s a Phormium…) from the ground, split it into two and then re-plant it with half in a new location and the rest back in its original home.

A solid mission’s work done, we said our goodbyes and headed off to enjoy the rest of our weekends. Special congratulations to our mission host Sue, on completing the Couch to 5k programme - we can’t wait to see you at Hilly Fields Parkrun!

With spring slowly making an appearance it was time for us to head back to Saint Swinthun’s and continue clearing another area of the garden and this time it was the driveway. Welcome Luana to your first GoodGym task - hope we'll see you at another soon!

It might have been damp and a cold wind but that didn’t stop us dedicated GoodGymers, we set about gathering some tools and clearing the weeds and grass. There was a lot of wild garlic and grass and some unexpected surprises including a buried toothbrush and a fancy slug.

Once we’d piled all the weeds at the far end of the driveway, it was time to head our separate ways with a spring in our step knowing we’d had a productive morning!