Covering new ground

GoodGym went along for an introductory visit to an exciting new project in Newton St Loe.

This is a large walled garden taken on by a charity called Grow for Life, where we met Wayne, the project's manager. The garden falls on a gentle south-facing slope, of which the upper part had already been configured and planted with various veg crops.

Below that was an area which had been cleared and covered in order to clear out weeds and prepare the soil for the next lot of planting. Our first job was to help prepare the next area down from that...

First up, go over the area and remove any large stones and remaining bramble growths. That was the heavy lifting phase. Once we'd done that, the most fun part was to unroll strips of plastic sheeting which would be left to cover the area for a couple of months to properly kill all the weeds. We rolled out the sheets, then laid out stones and wooden pallets to pin in down.

After that we took a quick break, sitting on the area which is going to become a shed, before heading up to the more mature part of the plot for some watering and hoeing (technically, swoe-ing!) of the vegetable plot.

This is lovely plot, and we'll definitely be back to help out some more in the future. Don't let its remoteness from the town centre put you off, it'll be an exciting one to get involved in and watch as it develops over the coming months and years...