Wonder Wall

On Tuesday evening, 5 Goodgymmers from Islington, Camden and Hackney travelled to the awesome ARC Centre in Angel to lend a hand with watering some of the 400 donated plants, bushes and trees from this year's Chelsea Flower Show.

However, Will the gardening expert gave us a more urgent task before we started with gardening. Loads of paving slabs had been dropped off outside the centre as part of their impressive renovation of their front garden and café area. However, the stones risked being stolen by passers-by unless we built them into a structure in ample time!

We formed a human chain to transfer the stones, with Frankie, Victoria and Patrick gathering the piles of slabs, and then letting Simon and John build up a dry stone wall around the centre itself. Very satisfying work, watching a sturdy barrier appear in front of our eyes!

From here, we then made our way towards one of the Canalside Gardens plots with a wheelbarrow full of soil, forks, spades and a mattock to help with preparing the area for more planting, despite the heatwave. Will broke up the hard dry soil with the mattock (a pick axe-like tool), while Simon and John turned over the old soil to introduce fresh soil. Frankie and Patrick shoveled a few barrows of fresh soil between the centre and the garden, while Victoria used a hose to thoroughly soak all of the thirsty plants and greenery in the space.

We brought the session to an end just after 7pm, and returned to the ARC Centre to celebrate Frankie's 100th good deed and Simon's 400th good deed (That's 500 between us! Go team!).

We hope to return to the ARC Centre for future gardening projects very soon (Saturday afternoon is likely- watch this space).