Seeds, Weeds & Raking Up The Good Deeds

On a grey May Saturday morning, some of GoodGym Hounslow joined Jan from Friends of Turnham Green, and Friends from GoodGym Hammersmith & Fulham, and from GoodGym Ealing. We were helping to create a wildflower meadow at the west side of the park.

Jan got us to work on four main tasks:

• Trimming the grass down
• Scarifying the lawn
• Planting flower bulbs
• Sewing wildflower seeds.

We got down to business. The first question on everyone’s minds was ‘What the heck is scarifying?!?’, and if it wasn’t it should have been.

Scarification is ‘The mechanical removal of surface thatch from a lawn. Surface thatch naturally forms on a lawn. However, when it gets too thick it prevents important nutrients such as water, fertiliser and oxygen from getting to the grass roots.’ Thank you google. So an important job to make sure the ground was prepared for the planting, and not us running around being terrifying (that was just me with the strimmer).

We spread out along our cordoned off section of the park, where the meadow would one day be, and got down to it.

• Analiese and Big Little Beth were on grass chopping duty, getting to grips with the big sets of shears, and trimming the longer patches being scarified
• Michelle, Ben and I used the long back scratcher style scarifying rakes to get the ground going
• Alan was raking up the grass and moss and chopped bits up into the wheelbarrow and out of the way
• Milly, Helen and Georgia were using tiny little claw like tools to prep the soil to sew the seeds.

At this point, Katie turned up (having made a detour via the park by Turnham Green Station, and then the funfair), and joined in with the scarifying. We noticed too that Jan had disappeared, and came back with a big smile and her new toy.

Last time GoodGym helped out here (holding Chris and JP responsible for this, as they aren’t here to defend themselves), there were a few strimmer issues. Well, Jan had treated herself to a brand new one, courtesy of the Argos in Ealing. The battery went in, the safety goggles went on and I got to christen the new tool. Much more effective than the choppers (sorry Analiese and Beth).

Ben had called dibs on planting, and was dotting beautiful yellow flowers in and around the area with his dibber. Katie and Michelle had both had a go at strimming, and luckily Milly was on hand to make sure everyone kept all their fingers and toes with those maniacs let Luce on the strimmer!

Georgia left us, as she had a busy day of being social ahead - Georgia it was glovely to have you back with us again. On that note, Helen, Milly, Katie, Ben and Alan moved towards the edge of the park to get seeding and weeding over there. I stayed with Michelle, Analiese and Beth, and we finished up on the scarifying and getting rid of the waste grass.

It was scarifying how quickly the time had gone - somehow we’d been there for almost two hours. Jan was sow strim-pressed with our hard work, and thanked us, but before we left, there was something else going on...

Cake.

Yes in true GoodGym style, we had cake. Courtesy of Michelle and in celebration of this task being my 250th good deed. I’ve raked up the good deeds over my two years of being a GoodGymmer, and despite the pandemic and the group run dramas and everything in between, I wouldn’t have changed any of it.

Thank you very much for the cake, Michelle, and thank you everyone for making this mission, and the 249 before this one, so much fun. Plant wait for the next 250!