Super effort from Victor, Sanjeev, and Ben this evening to help Keep Manchester Tidy 🚮

Despite a late-arriving Sanjeev, we made the short trot towards the Bridgewater Hall and Hulme from the relative quiet of St Peter's Square with no metrolink running. It wasn't long before litter on pavements and next to parked cars started to build up, an apt cue to bring out the gloves, litter pickers, and dashing pink refuse sacks.

Lots of squashed drinks cans, takeaway trash, and plastic bottles slowly filled up the bags, with flyers and coffee cups adding to the load. Near the bridge to Hulme Park, we unearthed a whole host of rubbish including a broken tartan umbrella 🌂 and several laughing gas cannisters.

After crossing the bridge, Hulme Park was relatively tidy, with just a few hotspots identified and rubbish removed.

In total, we collected 7 refuse sacks, 4 cannisters, plus a brolly and some broken poles. A good haul left next to a public bin, and reported to Keep MCR Tidy for collection during council rounds.

While not political, there was something very William Wallace about the task tonight, with FREEDOM being the aim of the game to help with the maintenance of fruit trees in Philips Park 🌳

While Dennis was on his way, we weeded what we could around the fruit trees, with lots of grasses taking up the space within the cages.

Once the tools arrived the real work could begin. With a bespoke allen key 🔑 we unscrewed the attachments holding the cage to the stakes, giving more breathing space to the apple 🍎 and pear 🍐 trees in the park. It also freed up more room to thoroughly weed, give them a lot of water, and reduced the wire from the cages digging in and causing damage to the growing branches.

Fanette and Ben managed to do this for most of the trees, with a few trips back and forth to collect water 💧 and managing to keep the screws and cages for later use. The pile of weeds and grass were disposed off around the park. The cherry 🍒 tree just had a good watering, having not grown too much with some of the dead branches removed. Other pruning tasks will be for another day.

Meanwhile, Sanjeev and Dennis focused on one of the leaning apple trees, in an attempt to support it and straighten it up. With the lack of rain and clay soil, making a hole for a new stake took a bit of trial and error. With a hammer 🔨, manual hand earth auger drill (basically a big screw tool), and a bit of water, they did finally get a couple of holes in to apply stakes, held in place by loose stones. Sustainable engineering certainly at play, using loose stones, a wobble, and manual tools to provide the support with no power tools or concrete in sight 🌱🌳💪

With the fruit trees uncaged, cleared, watered, and grasses disposed, we cleared up, seeing the orchard before their Britain in Bloom judging in August. The walk and run back along the Ashton canal was a pleasant warm down after a productive session 👏 well done all!

Welcome to Lucy for your first GoodGym session!

This evening, we were back at Eden Gardens Orchard in Philips Park to finish where we left off with a greenhouse needing to be built in place. Some of the frame from two weeks ago needed a bit of re-jigging and lots of the screws needed tightening, but bit by bit, we made some progress in the right direction.

While some screws snapped with some over-keen tightening (🙋‍♂️ guilty) we managed to get the back and 2 sides in place to screw together, with Jodie nimbly able to attach the clips connecting the frame to the base. Just in time, the front frame was ready to attach after some swapping of pieces, with a team effort needed to hold parts together while others screwed the bolts in.

As we tightened the screws, added more of the roof, and cross pieces were added for some extra strength, the structure became much more sturdy, shapely, and almost looked like a greenhouse (just without the glass).

Dennis from the gardens seemed very pleased, bringing out a northern staple of vimto, plums freshly plucked from the trees, and Julia supplementing with biscuits to keep us sustained. We had a potter around the orchard, seeing how sweetcorn is fertilised in lines, with a bit of weeding of the rocky path. Thank you to Peter for the Oregano!

Cracking effort from all involved. Next week we'll be helping weed and maintain the fruit trees 🌳 growing in Philips Park, including those grown with magic walnuts.

Jodie, Sanjeev, and Ben made their way up to Heaton Park to help out with a spot of balsam bashing near the tram museum.

A park rich in history coming into public ownership in 1902, Himalayan balsam was brought over during the Victorian era but it's ability to very quickly spread has made it difficult when other plants try to grow. Over the 600+ acres in Heaton park, there is plenty near the boating lake and pond, and we were helping out in an area nearer the eastern side of the park.

Between the three of us plus Ella from the park and her mum, we cleared a large area, initially aiming for the tree, but managing to go above and beyond to clear a decent chunk in 90-100 minutes of bashing. The odd bramble did get in the way, with a few pangs of pain and exclamations of "OUCH!" but all in all, a productive session.

Lots of information about the park, parkrun comparisons, National Football Museum, local bootcamps, corporate volunteering, plus much more.

We are back in the park on Sunday 2nd August to do some path edging. Juno will likely be coming along.

How many GoodGymers does it take to construct the frame to a greenhouse? 5 apparently as Julia, Peter, Fanette, Ben, and Sanjeev went along to Eden Gardens Orchard in Philips Park to help out. A new task and location for us!

Really nice community orchard, with lots of espaliar apple trees growing, plus beds of corn 🌽 poppies, strawberries 🍓 raspberries, flower beds plus a few sheds and a polytunnel. They have regular sessions during the week and Saturday morning, not just for volunteers but also as a place to relax, read, or just spend some time there.

Recently, they needed to take down a makeshift greenhouse and wanted to replace it with a new model. This is where we came in, with limited IKEA flat pack skills and basic instructions.

It was trial and error for much of it, trying to piece bits together, match up the numbers, and work out which way bits went. While the front and back skeleton was made, after some minor adjustments and tightening of screws, the side pieces were constructed. The frame along with the roof and other bits can wait for when building in-place once the area is cleared. We'll be back later in the month to do some of this.

Good building session with some false starts and spilled bolts 🔩 giving us the runaround!

Welcome to Jodie, Julia, and Wojciech for your first GoodGym session!!

Today we were at Gorse Hill Studios community allotment, otherwise known as "Da Ruff Patch", to give the area a thorough weeding and clear up for others to use it and for growing the wide range of food already there.

Julia and Wojciech did a sterling job in the polytunnel, clearing out all the bindweed along one side and weeding around the tomatoes, beans, and basil (although one is now in a separate pot...) to leave it looking almost unrecognisable. After a long spell of warm weather the plants had taken off, with some growing toward the roof! A few frogs and caterpillars were found, photographed, and rehomed.

Jodie and Fanette concentrated on some of the raised beds to give the beans, carrots, kale, and salad some breathing space from the relentless bindweed, while Sanjeev took on the bindweed on the fence and many of the weeds along the border closer to the allotment entrance. Peter and Ben hacked away at whatever shouldn't be there, including lots of discarded metal and wood, lots of brambles, horsetail, bindweed, and sticky weed to free up the back corner while preserving the growing pumpkin and/or watermelon.

Very productive session with many hands making light work and lots of therapeutic and mindful weeding for the super seven. Time flew by and looking forward to being back again over the summer!

Plenty of digging and lifting this evening for Esteban, Sanjeev, and Ben!

Katie from Gorse Hill Studios was looking for some help sprucing up the Gorse Hill Studios garden, with plenty of plants getting delivered soon and events coming up over the summer.

After the 4.5 km jog from the city centre along the canal, our first task was to unload one of the bags of compost that we prepared last year and to construct a mound of soil. Lots of the plastic matting was removed but the heavy lifting didn't end there.

Next up was to replant some of the trees that had been planted last year after getting dug out during the fence construction around the outside. With more digging over of a patch ready for planting of the incoming plants, we weeded what we could. The plastic matting, broken bench, deadwood, and other bits of rubbish were carried around to the skip, with the bags of fresh compost carried around to the front for people to use this week.

Lots of jobs and Katie seemed very happy with the day's work, not just from us but also from other volunteers at the Studios. Looking forward to seeing the end product in a week or two!

Great effort on the jog to the task and back this evening! Super effort!