34 Camdenites helped the Story Garden for one hour to prepare the community garden for the opening on Saturday!

Welcome along to Rhiannon, Ana, Theo and Laura whose first time it was last night - fantastic to have you along!

In the news this week:

1. Kentish Town City Farm has been saved! YAY! The petition and media attention worked - the old trustee board has been removed and a new one put in place. PLUS a very kind donor has given £100,000 to pay off the farms debts and given it a great basis to go on from. Read more here.
2. We've got lots of community missions this Saturday helping to set up, pack up and look after a GoodGym Stall. See all the community missions here.
3. Join the GoodGym Camden Facebook Group here.

Wow what a night of GOOD, we really put the GOOD and the GYM in GoodGym! We helped the wonderful Story Garden, which is run by Global Generation, get prepared for their public opening this Saturday - chiefly making the site safe for the public.

After 200 metres of running/walking we arrived at the Story Garden, lots of volunteers were already at work drilling, building sheds and more. Martina explained we were the biggest group they'd ever come to help and they really appreciated that. She split us into five groups:

1. A huge team shovelled and wheelbarrowed woodchip from the HUGE pile to all over the garden. Once wheelbarrowed over people were there to spread to across.
2. A team of eight moved sheds from one corner of the site to the other - there they will be built and then laid out in their positions. Some strong shifting going on!
3. A team of four shifted huge containers of soil from the tonne bags over the build planters in the centre of the garden - feeding those new plants and making it look more like a garden!
4. Another group of four shifted huge bags of compost in the pollytunnel to their correct position and then joined team one to shift all the woodchip.
5. The final group of eight moved scaffolding and odd bits of wood over the corner. These will be used to make an array of things - including a fence, planters and anything else going.

King of the Woodchip!

There was so much constant movement going on, GoodGymers walking every which way on their individual tasks. It was awesome to see - particularly from on to of the huge pile of woodchip. Now that's some POV! Over one hour we got absolutely tonnes done, literally 34 hours of volunteering work - that is fantastic, well done all. Martina was so pleased by our efforts :)

With 20 minutes left of the session we did a quick dynamic warm up and then went for a 3k run around the canals and Granary Square. Lovely stuff. We then finished the evening with a brilliant pub trip!

Next week we are all going to help Cecil Sharp House, sign up here.

PB out

Tonight, seven GoodGymmers met up after work to help out at Camden Highline's volunteering session.

Before we go too far into the nitty gritty of how we litter picked, here's a shout out to Latoya: Latoya reached her 50th good deed at this volunteering session, having been unable to make it to her regular Haringey group run last night. 46 of these good deeds have been since the start of the year, so that's super speedy work - awesome job, Latoya! 😄🎉👏

Camden Highline have recently been awarded some funding to help improve Camden Gardens park, which is located beneath the western end of the Highline route. Before they start any landscaping work, they need to clear the park. Consequently, they put a call out on Instagram for volunteers to help clear the site of debris. Having seen the call (and knowing the facility of our runners for clearing stuff), we Insta-ntly knew we could help (side note, I'm both embarrassed and proud of this pun).

On arrival, we were given a brief introduction to the project by Adam, who also unveiled that that night we could choose between sweeping some gravel and litter picking. Most, if not all of us, went for litter picking. This was potentially more from curiosity than from anything else: The park looked clean enough to satisfy even my mother, and it was intriguing to consider exactly what there was to litter pick! (At one point, Adam apologised for the relative cleanliness of the park, which must have felt like an incredibly odd thing to apologise for! 😂)

It turned out that the possibilities were more exciting than the reality. We found a lot of the usual culprits: cigarette butts, shiny foil confetti, and fragments of broken glass. At one point, we found a bottle cap that was attempting to emulate a chameleon by blending into the surrounding gravel (It's surprising how excited you get when you spot a premium bit of litter like that.) At another point, Dharmesh made up some sort of game involving his litter picker and a favoured stick. We didn't ask the rules, but we're sure he would be willing to share them for people to play along at home. Feel free to ask him the next time he's touristing in your area 😄👍

As there were a decent number of volunteers (both GoodGym and non-GoodGym), we finished up within 50 minutes of our start time and took the requisite photo for the report.

GoodGym Camden being GoodGym Camden, post-task we made our way to a local pub with some of the other volunteers and organisers for a quick drink. It was there that we were promised lots of (or at least some) heavy lifting on upcoming volunteering sessions that Camden Highline plan on organising. Keep an eye out for these on the GoodGym Camden upcoming run page for when they're arranged! 😄 (& Feel free to join us on a group run before that!)

20 Goodgymers ran 3-5k to help Cecil Sharp House and the Story Garden!

Welcome along to the newbies - Rea, Sofia, Amy, Eleanor and Tilly - lovely to have you along!

In the news this week:

1. Community Mission this Sunday helping Crouch End Open Spaces, it finishes with a free picnic - full details here.
2. There also a Community Mission next Thursday helping Camden Highline - more details here.
3. Join GG Camden Facebook Page here and the Unofficial Unofficial GG FB group here.

Story Garden Report:

Eleven of us headed around the corner to the Story Garden, we've never had a task so close! Upon our arrival Martina gave us a health and safety brief and told us how Global Generation (who also manage Skip Garden) have recently taken over the site. A community garden will be built over the next few months and then everything at Skip Garden will be brought over in October.

Our task this evening was to move loads of planks of wood, big and small. Taking them from one pile to another, in preparation for them to be made into planters which will be all around the garden.

Alternative plank competition

We worked hard in the heavy rain taking the planks of wood in pairs and solo across the site. Martina was very impressed that we kept working in the rain and really appreciated the amount we moved in 40 mins!

After a group picture we headed on a 3k run or walk, and then all finished off with a group stretch.

Cecil Sharp sum up by Abi:

Led by Steve, 9 of us set off on a drizzly 2km run to Cecil Sharp House, a place we visit once a month to help the gardening team maintain the grounds. Amidst the drizzle, we swept up needles the yew trees had been shedding onto the paths and set about eliminating weeds that were growing inbetween paving slabs, up walls etc.

In a short time, and accompanied by some upbeat violin music, the place was looking a lot neater. We then embarked on a slightly longer run back via (but not over) Primrose Hill before each heading either home or to the pub to dry off.

Sign up for next week here when we'll be helping St Mary's Flats, Marie Curie Hospice and maybe the Story Garden again.

PB out