Mind over Mattock

GoodGym Brighton’s got a new favourite park. Tucked away behind Lewes Road is Saunders Park, a magical land complete with adventure playground, paddling pool, neon basketball courts and a thriving community garden run by the Brighton and Hove Food Partnership with plenty of jobs for 9 GoodGymers to get stuck into.

Community Garden leader Rosie equipped us with gloves, chocolate HobNobs and a range of tools (including our new favourite – the mattock) and gave us our brief for the evening: There was a giant courgette and pumpkin patch to weed, an overgrown heap of sticks to clear to make way for some new compost bins, and a whole bed of hardy shrubs to do away with – which turns out to fit our skillset perfectly. Destroy!

Rosie explained how volunteers have so far transformed the top of the park from a barren wasteland into the welcoming community garden it is today and invited us to join the fornightly Wednesday morning volunteering sessions. A brilliant project and we’ll certainly be back for another go with the mattock.

And Tara would just like to add a big thank you to Rosie, for writing the above, a big Brighton Goodgym welcome to Damian who joined us tonight for his first group run, and a reminder that we're having our monthly parkrun meet up at Preston Park on Saturday. See you next week when we're back at Brighton Pavilion and our new social secretaty Nipun will be organising our monthly social (i.e. deciding what pub we're going to!)