Our winter food bank clean got going last night; a very welcome indoor task given the sudden chill!

Each winter we do a session roughly once a month to give the food bank a thorough clean. It's hard for their usual team of volunteers to take time away from packing food parcels to do a really thorough clean, so GoodGym taking over the task helps them focus on getting food out to people in need.

This month we cleaned fridges, emptied food waste, cleaned the wall behind the food waste crates, swept & mopped in the kitchen. In the main hall we moved the shelving along the wall closet to the car park, swept, mopped, cleaned the shelves.

This evening we were back at the Rose Hill Community Centre to tackle the garden space for the Rose Hill Junior Youth Group.

Armed with tools, fortified with Meg's lovely flapjacks and lit by a combination of football pitch floodlights, head torches and rechargeable potable lights, we managed to get a lot done.

More roots were cleared and scrubby plants removed. I really hope that we managed to protect the bulbs planted by the nursery earlier in the week!

Chat ranged from holiday planning, winter recipies, food and book recommendations.

Good work team!!

This evening we returned to the Warneford Hospital site to do some more work on their anniversary garden installation.

More compost was poured into the huge metal planters, more gambions were filled with stones and pinecones (pretty sure we could all have a crack at dry stone walling now!) and we were able to congratulate Anwen, Fred and Andy on their cracking performances at the Oxford Half Marathon!

Working quickly to race the sunset and dying light (said in my best Michael Sheen voice) we achieved a brilliant amount. Can't wait to see the finished result!

A few of us then went for a run, where I inflicted an intervals session on the group, SORRY!!!!

Until next week......... xoxo

Warneford Hospital is creating a new garden on the front lawn to mark the 200th anniversary of the site next year. It's a big undertaking, with an avenue of trees, and a series of huge planters made from curved corrugated steel sheets for the different wards to take ownership of.

Last night we were filling the gabion baskets which surround the planters for the trees. They were filled with a combination of recycled rubble and pine cones from the mature trees around the lawn. It was quite a creative process! We also shifted twenty large pallets into the bottoms of the 7 huge raised bed planters, and started filling them with a combination of woodchip and top soil. It was a race against the sunset, but we made good progress.

We'll be back next week for more of the same!

Thank you Vicky for the report title.