A Knotty Task

The Friends of Springfield Park are based on the site of the world famous Alder Hey Hospital, in Liverpool. They work tirelessly to provide a peaceful place where families from the neighbourhood, staff and patients from the hospital can come and sit.

The Friends of group are dedicated to renovating, creating and maintaining the park, aiming to make an enjoyable, peaceful, useable space for all.

Arriving in the rain, that had persisted all day, I was met by the indomitable Keith. He gave me a short history of the park, and showed me the newly installed seating area, complete with its very own Superlambanana.

We were soon joined by Donna and Dave from FoSP along with a group of great GoodGymers... Eimear, John, Rowan and Sam made a dream team that has been GoodGyming together for a long time ❤

The main task was to move 9 large sawn off circular logs (you can see the rough size in the pictures) from a storage container. We were asked to place them in a circle, under the trees, to create a new mindfulness seating area.

Lifting, rolling and wheelbarrowing were the order of the day. Within a short time the logs were in place, and we just had to try them out.

With time to spare we also cleared weeds from around a container, ready for a local graffiti artist to spruce it up with images of Ken Dodd and the Diddymen (it is in Knotty Ash, after all).

Donna told us about her ambitious plan to create a rock snake with the help of local children and their families. She has painted a magnificent snake head on a rock, found in her garden. This will be joined by tens of smaller rocks, painted and donated by friends of the Park, to make up the body. In preparation for this, we dug out a trench along the edge of the path, nearest to the hospital.

A final task that needed good old GoodGym muscle power was the shifting of a whole load of planters, from the wildflower area, to the cultivated part of the park. Keith was made up, as he couldn't have managed on his own, and can now replant at his leisure.

All in all, a very successful and satisfying session.

Donna is already planning for our return, although we managed to tick everything off her to do list...for now!