After the success of last year’s festival themed window display Christine and the team at the BHF had asked us back for a repeat performance. Julie, Rachel and Claire met at the Quaker centre for a sunny 2.5km run to the shop where we met Emily, Jana, Jade and Luke. After fuelling up on some carrot cake bars (getting some veggies in), we headed up to the ‘Narnia’ store room to look through the treasure trove of donated items for anything we could use in the display.

We filled 3 big cages full of sleeping bags, tents, mats, folding chairs and festival gear. Jana kept an eye out for any colourful festival fashion to dress the mannequins in. Sadly the fluorescent pink shell suit Julie found didn’t make the final display!

Julie and Claire moved the cages downstairs in the lifts to where Jade and Luke had made a start on the backdrop of the display - putting down some astroturf and camping chairs. Next our feature tent was put up and the display started to take shape. Jana, Rachel and Emily brought down the remaining items and started putting them in place.

Soon we were halfway through and there were sleeping bags and camping chairs everywhere! We started to wonder how we would get everything done in time, but we kept going and before we knew it the window was looking very impressive. Well done everyone!

Christine always has plenty of jobs that she needs help with so keep and eye out for more tasks coming up.

On arrival, we were greeted warmly by the residents. We were shown the gardening tasks and the selection of gardening tools that a resident had left for us to use. This was Sandra's first task and she got stuck in straight away! Sandra was very knowledgeable about plants and helped us to identify the plants in the flower bed. Emily worked hard to dig up the grass that had grown over the flowerbeds alongside Sandra and myself. We couldn't believe how much we dug up and filled a huge bag that at the end required us to test our boot camp skills and dragged it to the front of the building! We all welcomed a thirst quenching cuppa offered to us by a very lovely resident! We hope to return soon as there's still much to do.

Weeding ponds, paths and hedgerows was the name of the game for our Tuesday evening session, when eight GoodGymers headed to Edith Gardens, in Berrylands.

One of 12 designated nature reserves in the borough, this special site is used by people to access nature who might not otherwise be able to - such as disabled people and people suffering from mental health problems. So it’s important that it’s kept in good condition for their use.

Luke bravely volunteered to lean and ‘rake’ the pond to remove the algae on its surface, Tom and Sabir worked hard clearing brambles from the hedgerow GoodGymers planted a few years ago, Jana enjoyed slashing the nettles on either side of the wheelchair accessible path, while Dave, Julie, Rachel and Emma weeded the path to make it ready for flattening next week.

It was a slightly longer run from the Quaker Centre to this task - 3.5km - but great to get back to this site and hopefully we’ll return again this summer to lend a hand to the volunteers that manage this space so brilliantly day-to-day.

The less than clement weather this evening didn't stop 8 intrepid GoodGymers from donning their cagoules and heading over to Surbiton Library for some extreme gardening. The task was to empty out two ivy root filled planters to enable them to be refilled with cleaner soil ready for planting.

What a wash out! The weather was stormy from the get go with lightning in the distance and heavy rain starting soon after we arrived. We were even treated to a bit of hail too! This was just a mere distraction (kind of) to us GoodGymers as we set to the heavy work of emptying the beds. Mattoxes and shovels flying all around, we managed to fill four big ton bags with waste and were thankful of the run home to warm up!

A big congrats to Marie-Noelle who was celebrating her 50th good deed this evening - amazing work!

GoodGym Kingston smashed out another session at the amazing Growbaby this evening. After we had all run, walked or cycled there, we were greeted with a long list of tasks to tick off so we got straight to it.

Tom, Sabir and Dave were upstairs sorting out the bookshelves, toy boxes and board game cupboard, Claire, Mel, Skyla and Chloe were tasked with sorting out the huge amount of donations that were dropped off by DLAG at the weekend - nappies, wipes and babyfood to give out to the local families in need. Jana amassed a load of clothing to hang out on the rail for the families to browse when the charity was open the following day. Rachel kept us all in check and made sure the jobs were done well and within the time!

A big welcome to Skyla and Chloe on their first good deed! Lovely to have you along and hope to see you soon.