The Walled Garden of Newton St Loe

OK, so it's almost winter now and it's no longer warm anymore, but we are all grateful for blue skies and sunshine when on a GoodGym mission. This was one of those mornings, air crisp and chilly but warming under a late Autumn sun.

Five GoodGymmers arrived at one of our favourite locations, the walled garden at Newton St Loe. This Grow for Life project has been ongoing for the last couple of years and aims to be completed by 2025. Grow for Life's purpose is to provide social and therapeutic gardening sessions for people affected by low confidence, anxiety, depression or isolation.

In attendance to help was the ever enthusiastic Wayne who greeted Stephen, Jane, Natalie, Mark and Meyrick. Always prepared, he told us what he needed us to do that morning and we set to work.

A considerable amount of wood chip needed redistributing, some of it initially along the top by the main wall, let's call it a 'rampart'. If I could understand some of Wayne's grand vision, there will be trees and a path along here, and it is towards that goal that we added progress.

Elsewhere wood chip needed laying down over well worn paths throughout the garden. Whilst helping with this, barrowing and distributing, I took my eyes of the work that was going on at the top, but I believe Jane (to whom we are very grateful for continuing to organise this mission), took on the mighty bindweed.

Towards the end, inevitably, manure was involved. Horse manure to be exact. We reworked the compost piles, turning them upside down and layering them with woodchip, greens and horse manure before signing off with whatever we wanted to harvest from the garden.