Two of us from GoodGym joined the regular CABAHS volunteers at Charlton House for some gardening today, helping to spread aromatic woodchips to create lovely pathways through the Glade.

We had so much fun! Even though the rain cut our session short to just an hour, we still managed to chip in and make a difference. Every little bit helps!

Another do good, get fit moment in the bag!

Great session, great company, and plenty of woodchip puns!

Last night, 12 of us gathered at Charlton House before running or walking our way to Charlton Manor Primary School for an evening of community spirit, paintbrushes and several spiders.

After a short run, some of the runners met up with our walking crew at the school, who were already armed with paintbrushes and getting stuck into freshening up the walls of the Mary Seacole classroom. No hanging about here!

Meanwhile, another small but mighty team tackled the lost property cupboard. We made some decent headway, sorting the mountain of mystery belongings into different crates and uncovering what felt like a thriving spider community along the way.

As they say, many hands make light work, and with everyone mucking in, we got plenty done.

Thank you everyone - we'll be back later in the year to give the outdoor equipment a fresh lick of paint, so watch this space!

Coming up

🌳 This weekend: Alongside our usual parkruns, we've got two lovely community missions:

🌱 Spreading woodchip on the woodland walk at Horn Park: https://www.goodgym.org/v3/sessions/spreading-woodchip-on-the-woodland-walk-at-horn-park

🐾 Helping clean up at the Old Blue Cross Pet Cemetery: https://www.goodgym.org/v3/sessions/clean-up-at-the-old-blue-cross-pet-cemetery-4b4c6df7-1980-40e8-ab7b-12ef394e39b9

🏫 Next Wednesday: We're heading to Woolwich for a run to help out at Glyndon Community Centre: https://www.goodgym.org/v3/sessions/helping-at-glyndon-community-centre-fe52fe5b-49c1-4ed6-a817-a3de5d46ff9a

🌿 Next Saturday: Join us for a group run to Mycenae Gardens for some garden maintenance: https://www.goodgym.org/v3/sessions/maintenance-at-mycenae-gardens

Until next time, wonderful people! 👋

Rachel

On a sunny but cold October morning (belated signs that Autumn is definitely upon us), 4 GG'ers made their way to the walled garden next to Charlton House. The reason for the gathering was to help the resident CABAHS volunteers with their annual plant sale. This event is high on the CABAHS agenda, with proceedings going to the Greenwich & Bexley Community Hospice.

As soon as we arrived, we were greeted to the sounds of "We can stop lifting the heavy stuff, GoodGym are here to help!" - good to know that we carry such great reputation! Not wanting to prove the shouts wrong, we quickly set out to carry as many plants in boxes, crates and makeshift containers as we could to their respective pride of place for display to any interested buyers.

Such was our dedication that we were done in 30 mins, leaving us time to admire the plants and even make some phone calls to flatmates to entice them to buy the fruits of our labour. We hope the plant sale is a treemendous success!

Four Goodgymers, and our friend Bernarda, set out on a very autumnal morning to clean up Anchor & Hope Lane and Bugsby's Way, SE7. Always plenty of litter here - and this time the fallen leaves meant some searching for what lay beneath!

It's no longer unbe-leaf-able how many bottles and cans are thrown in this area and Ivor soon had two bags filled with recyclables. In one hour, we filled 7 bags and also cleared up a fridge door and a large builder's rubble bag. Thanks to all who turned out on a cold, but sunny morning! Bags leaf-t by the usual bins for Greenwich Council to collect.

I joined Madeline and some regular volunteers 6 of us in total for their monthly gardening session at The Oasis community Garden in Herbert road. This lovely little garden for the community is run by volunteers and funding they have received, to try make the garden nicer for the local area.

It was my first time here and I'm not the most confident with gardening one of the volunteers it was her first time also and she works as a gardener she paired up with me to show me how to plant daffodil bulbs using a fiskars tool to help dig out holes for the bulbs, I never even knew what this was. We had to clear some of the weeds and litter from surrounding areas first, the area where we worked on would become a wild garden we had some wild flower seeds to sprinkle also. We didn't get round to planting the tulip bulbs.

After the session got under way I got a bit more confident with what I was doing and even used one of electric cutting machines to try and break up some of the harder pieces of mud. This was a really good session I gained bit more knowledge of planting and getting to know different plants but it also pushed me out my comfort zone.

The session runs every third Saturday of the month there is always plenty to do but if you don't fancy the gardening side of things there is always litter picking as this corner gets lot of litter, there is something for everyone 😊

It’s that time of year again to get our bulbs in the ground and prepare for a blooming brilliant spring! Most of today’s task involved planting Narcissus ‘Paperwhite’ bulbs. Three GoodGymers — Aidyn, Cici and Cathy — joined the fun to plant along the long border.

Thankfully, the soil was nice and soft, making it easier to dig the six-inch-deep holes needed for our bulbs. Alongside the planting, we also squeezed in a bit of general garden maintenance.

There was an extra ray of sunshine in the session, too! I was wearing yellow, and blended right in with the Helianthus — practically becoming sunflower myself! Haha! Talk about being ray-diant! 😄

Overall, GoodGym, good company and another blooming lovely day. Oh, happy daze! 🌼 Dreaming of spring blooms, we’re already looking forward to seeing our hard work blossom. Every bulb planted is helping create a greener, more colourful garden for spring.

Hopefully, more of you can join us at our next sessions! Until then, see yah!

Cecilia D🍀/Cici