Green fingers and stiff legs

16 people ran 3 km to do good in Hackney and to help an elderly person clear their garden.

Tonight was quite a short run to the house of a lady whose garden was very overgrown with weeds. The night was dominated by tales from the GoodGym heroes who ran Run Hackney at the weekend (not me!), which is why it was also good to take it easy on the running front. 

The other group ran a short distance to the lovely Cordwainers Garden to help Kate fill a large watering container. Cordwainers Garden was set up by a group of neighbours on a disused piece of land belonging to the London College of Fashion in Hackney. It's a beautiful and hidden space,  now with sixteen small allotments, a pond, a beehive and a dye bed. The group split into two. One filled buckets with water to fill the large the container and the other group undertook 2 rounds of jump squats, lunges, mountain climbers and standing crunches before the groups swapped over. This session was topped off with a Brazilian Burpee Wave and 250 m intervals in Victoria Park.

Back on the Mission Run, 5 of us all arrived in our GoodGym tops and the ladies daughter greeted us with gloves, tools and even bottles of cold water! We got straight to work as there was a lot to be done in the time we had.  Amongst  the weeds we found all sorts; mint, parsley, a pear tree, roses and even a cherry tree! but they were all being over taken by the weeds and also needed a good watering. We gave it our best shot but could have easily stayed another hour, however the before and after shots were still pretty impressive. 

The daughter seemed very pleased with the result and she even had a short gardening lesson from some of the team so she can start getting some rewards from the great selection of plants. 

Kathryn Betts Ade Aboaba GoodGym Hackney Coordinator