A shady cast of characters

What's that you say? Gardening in the heatwave? No problem!

We have a regular monthly task in the garden of the Highfield Unit at Warneford Hospital, and 30+ degree heat was not going to stop us keeping our appointment.

The Highfield is the young person's in-patient unit of the Warneford - the hospital providing mental health services in Oxford. The hospital has wonderful extensive grounds and a tiny team to manage them, so a little under a year ago the Highfield requested regular help from GoodGym to keep their gardens under control. It's hard enough to be an in patient (or for your child to be an in patient) so the Matron of the Unit is keen to make the environment as pleasant as possible for the young people and their care-givers. Winter lockdown meant that we weren't able to do much for them until the spring this year, but since then we've gone every month to weed, prune and wage war against brambles, and it's really starting to make a visible difference. On this visit the gardens were looking far less bramble-infested, many of the perennials were blooming, and the weeds were not nearly as abundant as last month. That said, there's still always plenty to do in any garden at this time of year, so trowels, secateurs, and wheelbarrows at the ready, we wasted no time getting dug in.

This month we were working in garden section 2 and 3 and also along the fence line to the carpark - both because we've done the least work in those areas and because they were in the shade (it's almost as if we planned our work-order knowing a heatwave was coming...). Meysam and Anne did a wonderful job lopping buddleia, brambles and rosemary away from the path through the middle garden, being careful not to be too brutal given that the rosemary and buddleia are excellent for bees and butterflies. Meanwhile the majority of the group headed to the furthest garden section to fight brambles, water the raised beds, and in a new development this month Mark brought his own hedge trimmer to prune the hedge. Finally a small breakaway party snuck round the side of the building to tidy up the area by the fence to the car park. The rooms looking out in that direction just look at the fence, and we hope to plant bulbs there in the autumn so that there's some early Spring colour in the area to improve the view. The weeds had got quite established over the last few months, so thorough weeding was needed to get a head start for our September/October planting plans.

Slightly fewer wheelbarrow loads of weeds and thorny things were transported to the compost pile this month - a testament to the work that's happened in previous months - but we still to'd and fro'd several times. As always, time seemed to speed up, and in no time at all we were needing to pack up, lock up and return the tools to the shed.

One VERY important piece of info we learnt this Wednesday - a truly scientific poll showed that Carrot Cake is the favourite cake for GoodGym Oxford. Duly noted for our next celebration!