For the love of Clod

A lovely task kept our goodgymmers busy on this cold - oh such biting cold - Saturday morning.

The task was requested by one of our own; Goodgymmer Vikky is also part of the "Friends of St James' Gardens" community group. As Vikky is a Goodgym member, she was one step ahead on providing all the information and made listing the task an absolute breeze, which was super helpful for Bekah as it was her first time arranging and listing a task.

St James Gardens sit in the grounds of the majestic Liverpool Cathedral, and are a much loved but recently neglected community space. The gardens have considerable historic significance, having been used as a cemetery in a previous life, and include the graves of William Huskisson, Kitty Wilkinson, and Sir William Brown amongst many others. The Friends Of group are determined to slowly but surely provide some TLC, and so we went along to what will hopefully be the first of many sessions to look after this beautiful site, which also has a natural spring used by some locals to fill up water bottles!

The main agenda was spreading out Snowdrops and wild garlic. Sian & Vikky took one side of the garden, and Sally Ann, Melody and Bekah focused on some central patches. We had the opportunity to be creative in deciding how to spread the bulbs, and made some lovely waves and shapes which we'll see when the bulbs are in full bloom. The Friends Of had provided tools including a cylindrical spade, which perfectly removed cylindrical clods of earth, so we placed bulbs in a round hole before satisfyingly popping the perfect clods back in. The group were quite taken with this system, so much so that the much-admired clods inspired today's titular pun!

After two hours of enjoyable labour, the team called it a day and were glad to head in from the cold. We look forward to seeing the snowdrops in full bloom, and will be back to help this fantastic group continue to look after these valuable gardens.