What a turn out at yesterday’s GoodGym session together with the Friends of Vale Park. This is a local community in South Portslade, near Brighton, dedicated to improving Vale Park. They want it to be a place where the neighbourhood comes together, enjoys themselves, takes care of the public green space and becomes the heart of the local community.

Historically, Vale Park was a ‘Flint Pit’. In 1917 it was a quarry used for the extraction of sand and flints, and then became a dump. During the First World War the area was used as a training ground for soldiers who built bridges over the water-filled pits. At the south east corner, there was a deep pond fed by a natural spring. It seemed to be a popular place for children to play, to have some great games and excursions there, not without some incidents. Now it is a lovely park with colorful and flowering roses.

The Friends of Vale Park love their park and hope we do too. And we do!

15 GoodGym-ers cycled or ran to the park to help unbinding wonderful roses from the attack of burning nettles and other itching and stinging weeds. With extraordinary results! A great session for a belated celebration of Volunteers Week with some proper “Beerbusiness” at our follow up social gathering in the pub.

VALE PARK GARDENING GROUP is STARTING SOON. You might be interested to know that starting on Sat 28th June at 10 am, and then every LAST Saturday of the month, there will be a new Vale Park Gardening group. It’ll be a great chance to be a part of a lovely community, meet new people, do some gentle exercise in the fresh air and keep those weeds at bay in their beautiful rose beds. Good for the body, mind and soul!

The Friends of Vale Park are looking for a group name for the new Vale Park Gardening group, with “Weedy Ones” getting my vote 😊!

YMCA Stanley Court offers a safe environment and supported housing to people in need, helping them to get ready to moving for greater independence to achieve their true potential and overcome difficulties they might have experienced. Everyone living at Stanley Court can benefit from a range of opportunities to learn new skills, including volunteering and active participation in the gardening group.

Today GoodGym call was to help YMCA to revive the gardening group by preparing a green area to get suitable for future seeding, planting of flowers and growing of vegetables.

We were expected – as advertised on a poster to the residents!

Within 45 minutes we had peeled off the bindweed, chopped back the shrubs, weeded the overgrown patio entirely. We filled 15+ green bags with weeds and left the area looking much tidier, ready for future revamping!

The YMCA gardening group is open to all. You can come in for a taster session or attend regularly and learn a new skill while enjoying the fresh air. So, we did and finished off our group session with fitness exercises in the Saunder park nearby. GoodGym-er Rosie, lead the group back shining her 50 deeds' GoodGym T-shirt!

Today the GoodGym gang ran 7 km to Wellsbourne Community Garden and back.

We welcomed new members Paul, Paul and Paul.

Stalwart member Rosie was running her 50th session!

We met Lucy, our task owner, at the Wellsbourne Healthcare Centre. She explained they had a volunteer gardening day tomorrow. Our task was to dig holes to plant wild flowers and plants to attract pollinators. We readied our destructive green fingers and shovels and got to work. Others made swift work of tidying and weeding the garden.

Stefania did a fitness exercise session to work on all those muscles we had neglected while running and digging.

To thank us, lovely Lucy kindly gave us cooking herbs from the garden and chocolate. How nice 🙂!