Tonight, three GoodGymmers met up in Camden to help Cecil Sharp House.

Cecil Sharp House is home to the English Folk Dance and Song Society, which is a charity championing the folk arts at the heart of England’s rich and diverse cultural landscape. They raise some funding through hiring their gardens as an events space, but having limited funding for maintenance of their grounds.

Our task this evening was simple: we were to work on clearing weeds from the paved space in the rear garden.

Such a clear remit needed to be balanced a slightly unclear start to the task as we sought out any tool pointy enough to act as a scraper to the weeds. This resulted in a plethora of tools at our disposal (some of them perhaps unsuitable when considered from a purely practical perspective, but vital when considered from the necessity of whimsy). At any rate, it was often easier to pull the weeds up by hand rather than use a more specialized tool, and it was certainly more congenial to chatting as we worked.

At the end of our hour there, I took an after photo so that people could imagine what it would have looked like before we started, and got a quick group shot for this report.

It was good to meet you, Victoria and Adeel. Adeel, I hope you enjoyed your first GoodGym task, and, Victoria, I hope you enjoyed your visit to Camden. Catch you guys at another one soon! ☺️

Our first mission back at Cecil Sharp in the day light!

Great little neglected job was achieved by clearing behind the shed, a space that is the first viewed buy visitors to the garden and often forgotten, great work on the the Rosemary and Liz.

We’re also able to make a home for some of the unwanted plants for a school project in Somers Town.

Very successful spring clean of a neglected corner by the entrance to Cecil Sharp House.

Our favorite patio wedding brushes we’re making light work of the moss and weeds between the cracks in the pavement!

Amazing first group mission back to Cecil Sharp House, weeding by flood light we tackled a lot of Green Alkanet and three cornered leeks. No in themselves bad plants but we're becoming quite dominate so had to go to make way for a more diverse range of plants.

The big achievement being the shed tidy up, ready for 2022 and making task owner Susannah very happy, as pictured!

Huge thanks to Sarah and David for returning to Camden Good Gym after a while, hope to see you both soon!

We're back at Cecil Sharp House on the 19.01.22 lots more winter tasks in the garden to get it ready for spring.

Back to Cecil Sharp House this week taking on the fall out (literally) of the changing seasons.

Sweeping and bagging up 13 bin bags full of autumn leaves from the magnificent London plain trees in the grounds. All to the tune of rehearsing musicians coming from the house.

What me might have lacked in numbers we made up for in effort, huge shout out to Liz for powering though the task!

We’ll be back at Cecelia Sharp House next Wednesday 17th and with rakes and leaf blower to tackle the lawn!

First time back at Cecil Sharp house for nearly two years, nice to give it a tidy up and back there gain next month for more!