Another fun start to the week, Paul, Gus and I rocking up early. But the Brent Cross traffic had the lovely delivery team from Volunteers on Wheels stuck at a crawl and they only arrived just before 11am. Undeterred, we went at it double time, running trolleys down the ramp, unloading the van and pushing things back up to the shop team to sort. And then we were done, though I stuck around for 15min more to help move some produce into the stores.

This week we saw: leeks, potatoes, butternut soups, smoothies, bottled and canned drinks, mushrooms (inc. mushrooms growing on mushrooms, which had to be discarded but were a nice ecological novelty!), sweet potatoes, soda bread and a lot more I missed in the speed. Some of it will be going in stores for their big first birthday party celebrations this Wednesday, so they can give things away as raffle prizes and have extra on hand for the increased visitors. We'll be popping along around lunchtime!

GoodGym Barnet – Barnet Climate Action Week tiny forest Barnet

A beautiful day to get together at Mutton Brook as part of Barnet Climate Action Week, combining a little practical work, citizen science and a chance to introduce more people to our local Tiny Forests.

Starting at 11am, Richard and Subhamboth local residents, were already on site and quickly got stuck into some litter picking after a chat about the four Tiny Forests.

The original Tiny Forest is now well established, but the three newer forests have endured a brutal summer and are showing signs of stress, with some struggling trees and plenty of weeds.

These three forests are particularly interesting because each has a different soil preparation method. Looking up the slope, the middle plot uses biochar, the right-hand plot follows the standard Miyawaki method, and the left-hand plot uses a simpler, no-dig approach incorporating cardboard. On general inspection, the middle biochar forest appears to be showing the strongest growth, although proper measurements will tell us more. Victoria said Yes lots of fun. Like high school science class again haha!

’innovative approach to growing trees with the help of biochar was recently featured on BBC Countryfile at Blenheim Palace on 1 February 2026. You can find out more on BBC iPlayer.https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002qwy0

Roman & Victoria were both new to the Tiny Forest project and got stuck into our citizen science work, identifying trees, recording their positions along a transect and measuring their diameters. This helps us monitor growth and understand their potential for carbon capture. We’ll share the data with Earthwatch and hopefully continue these measurements over the coming months.

It was also a lovely opportunity to chat about our local community and the wider work GoodGym gets involved with, supporting green spaces, community groups and projects that encourage people to get outdoors and take practical action.

And, as has become something of a GoodGym tradition, we rounded things off with a little frisbee throwing and a runaround for anyone who fancied it!

A big thank you to everyone who came along. A lovely mix of practical volunteering, learning something new and enjoying our local green spaces together. That’s what GoodGym is all about!

Seven sturdy Goodgymmers gathered at the Phoenix for our group re-run to Shepherds Hill Gardens. It's a good long one, and to make it inclusive, we set up a walking group as well, with Patricia and Paul setting off early.

Yet we also gathered to celebrate yet another amazing milestone: Richard's 400th mission! Well, technically 402nd, as he'd been busy over the weekend helping at Ally Pally Park Run, but still, out came the hat, and we had our little ceremonial congratulations for the evening.

Subham joined us just in time for the warm up, and tonight's icebreaker was about pets, dissections and weird animals. Rachel shared a story about feeding crickets on the loose, and I recalled a fond memory of my tortoise, also called George. And, courtesy of Victoria, we learned schools in the US do a lot of weird dissection.

Then it was off for the long 2.7km run to Shepherds Hill, where Pat had already broken out the brooms and rake. There was a pile of dumped cement in one corner, which Subham gamely resolved, while Patricia tackled the grass areas, raking everything up. Everyone else was on path duties, catching all the early autumn leaves and carrying them in bags down to the leaf pile in the wood.

And before we knew it, it was time for our little tea break - some lovely fresh mint, guava juice and biscuits - so many biscuits, including a special vegan treat for me! We ate enough to earn the run back to the Phoenix, arriving about 20:30 for a warm down and a pat on our proverbial backs for treating ourselves to a night of fitness and helping the Friends of Shepherds Hill shepherd the hill.