Shifting a Charl-TONNE of soil!

18 wonderful runners ran 6km to help at Charlton Community Garden!

We welcomed two new runners to the GoodGym Greenwich crew last night. Big up to Aidan who has done more good deeds than all of us combined (nearly) and Jennifer who a few of us met at Greenwich Parkrun on Saturday! Welcome both! Hope you had a nice first run in Greenwich :)

A quick little warm up on the grass as we always do and then we set off down to Charlton on a slightly longer run than usual. Sadly the quickest route is rarely the nicest but when you're running and chatting with friends you forget about the busy roads and poor air quality!

We arrived 15 minutes later at Charlton Station.. where we haven't visited for over two years. CRAZY!! We were greeted by lovely trio Pat, Caroline and Jane who explained the many tasks at hand. The main one being to shovel out soil from one of the raised beds which will on Friday have installed a new irrigation system. At the moment the nearby tree is taking all the water and nutrients and the small plants don't stand a chance! So they are getting their own special system to help them thrive. The tree as you can imagine is doing great and has quadrupled in size since our last visit!!

Other tasks involved clipping back a shrub which apparently has been used as a dumping ground/hiding place for weapons by local gangs.... I've never seen you lot so excited, eager to see what you might find! Sadly (or should I say fortunately) no machetes or sawn off shotguns, just a few crisp packets and beer cans instead!

Everyone was getting stuck in, we had people on watering duty, others pulling out weeds from the paving stones and trimming the berry bush at the back!

After about half an hour, all the soil had been removed from the bed and piled onto the neighbouring tarp. All bushes were delightfully trimmed, plants had been watered and it was time to head back! But not before a spot of CAKE!

Jane had baked 3 delightful treats for us all and even had a flask of tea ready to go as well with some paper cups.. so lovely!!! The most hospitable task owners we've been to for sure!

We took a group photo with cheeks stuffed full of yummy cake and then headed back to the uni for a stretch. No time for a fitness session this week sadly but the option of putting in some quicker bursts on the run back instead, which I saw a grand total of zero people participating in, myself included haha. Nice to get a longer run in anyway!

Pun cred goes to Claire!

Great work everyone! The lovely ladies were SO pleased with what you got done! Thank you for working so quickly and efficiently as always. See you next week for some fun at St Lukes!

Other ways to get involved with Charlton Community Garden

The volunteers at CCG have a watering rota, so if you live near the area and want to help out then feel free to drop Pat an email directly on p.r.taylor@hotmail.co.uk and be added to the watering rota!

Also if anyone happens to be free this Friday morning, they are finishing the work on the raised bed so if you're around you can drop from 10am-midday to give them a hand.

Community Missions - help required!

There are two community missions currently up. One is this Sunday over near Woolwich, helping a medical charity dig out some hard ground to build a compost area... sounds like a lovely one, all the details are here if you want to get involved.

The other is in a few weeks at Mycenae House at lunchtime on Thursday 1st August to help prepare and serve food for a pop-up kitchen. All the details are here