It felt like we were in an episode of Garden SOS or Groundforce (or one of those similar garden makeover shows) last night as GoodGym Nottingham teamed up with the 1st Porchester Scout group to work at their scout hut.

Alongside parents and children from the group, GoodGymers Chris, Khiltee, ~Nat~, Rachel and first-timer Mike joined in with digging, chopping and pulling up a whole bunch of weeds and rubble from the outdoor area surrounding the building. The plan is to clear the area so that it can be evened out and made more welcoming and usable again, including installing some steps for better access.

This was a really enjoyable evening and we hope to return to help out some more in the coming weeks.

Welcome to Mike who joined us for his first GoodGym task, and to ~Nat~ for doing the double with the previous night’s task too – it’s not a competition but this task was probably her favourite as she got to use a leaf blower!

Next week we will be back at Sherwood Community Centre – sign up here.

Another week, another night of chipping away at this monster of a mission!

This time, Nigel and ~Nat~ turned up early to get a head start with the scrapers, our new favourite tool as recommended by Joel last week.

Doing it this way really does seem to help speed up the painting process and I'm sure we got through more of the railings last night than we have done on any of the nights before. Although some of that might be due to painting in almost sub-zero temperatures earlier in the year… Team Scrape have prepped a good chunk ready for us to get cracking with when we come back in a couple of weeks.

Welcome to Chloe who joined us for her first task! Hopefully see you again sometime soon!

On a (thankfully) cooler morning Elspeth and Peter put on the Junior parkrun hi-viz at Forest Rec.

We've a few of these listed over the next few weeks, why not come along?

Dayna, Florence and Nigel were joined by new comers Saul and Joel for the latest session of painting the railings at the ICCA Centre. Saul shared his memories of the building from the days it was owned by Sunblest and the resulting daily aroma of freshly baked bread. He also produced a steel brush and paint scraper that improved the preparation process significantly. Definitely good learning for our future sessions at this task as we work patiently towards its conclusion.

Well done to Chris who went along to the Windmill Community Gardens Little Shoots Garden Party to help them tidy up after the event.

Our community garden tasks have been a little thin on the ground this summer, so we were very excited to be invited back to Arkwright Meadows this week.

Katie had a few different tasks for us, the first of which was rejigging their shop area. With the hot, dry weather we've had lately, a lot of the plants in it had seen better days and it was time to consolidate them to fewer shelves and move the empty units out of the way.

Next, we split into two teams. Those who weren't around for last week's bramble attack (Leah, Rachel and Charlie who was celebrating his tenth GoodGym task!) headed over to the area normally used by the children's group to clear some more of the spiky fellows and make the amphitheatre space safer for them. It was tough but satisfying digging them out and I think we made a lot of good progress. They definitely hadn't grown back to the levels we saw when we first came to the site a year or two ago.

Over on the other side of the gardens, Peter, Natalie and Nigel were on compost duty, moving the oldest compost into containers ready to be used and jumping up and down on the newer stuff to tamp it down. Good use of the GoodGym muscle, I'm sure you'll agree!