Three GoodGymmers joined Grow for Life to spruce up their tool shed with a lovely lick of black paint. We always enjoy coming to their wonderful walled garden where they provide social and therapeutic gardening sessions for those living with low confidence, anxiety, depression or isolation. With lots of fun chat including the origins of phrases such as 'cutting the mustard' we can confirm that Bennath, Ruth and Tanya definitely cut the mustard today! With the repainted shed looking very smart we were well rewarded by our hosts with cool melon and iced drinks which were so welcome on a hot day. Great job all and looking forward to the next session in August, sign up to really make a difference to this small Bath charity.

We were so happy to return to the glorious Grow for Life walled garden at Newton St Loe today where we all got stuck in to the task of giving the toilet shed a much needed coat of paint; it was great fun with lots of positive chat in a beautiful place. Join us next time as we've been invited back to paint the tool shed too! Big thanks to Meyrick for fab photos 😊

When these run reports are late appearing it's almost always because I'm suffering from pun paralysis! That is to say we're supposed to add a pithy headline, preferably involving a clever pun of some sort. Or at the very least add a headline of any kind at all.

And some days they just won't pop in to your head. GoodGym writers' block is a real thing, you know!

Embarrassingly, this time I went to an AI chatbot for help. "Give me an apple themed pun", I lamely asked of it.

"What do you call an apple that's been bitten? A half baked idea" it came up with. Half-baked indeed!

I pointed out that this was a joke, not a pun, and learning from its mistake the chatbot did indeed offer a (terrible) pun this time.

Encouraged by this I asked "give me a few puns to pick from" and, noticing my accidental punnage in this, added "do you see what I did there?"

Chatbot did indeed pick (sorry!) up on this and offered a few lame picking-related puns this time. But the work was done by now. My own creative juices (sorry!) were once more flowing. This was my story. My scoop. Chatbots have their place, they're out of the box now and they won't be going back ... but we must use them wisely - not as creators to do the creative work for us, but as a sounding board to help spark our own imaginations.

Back to the task. Grow For Life have an orchard next to the Walled Garden we all know and love. Being an orchard of course, it's rather low maintenance. So I never even knew it was there.

But today they've invited their fans and friends - and there were indeed dozens of people in attendance - to come along and help in picking some of the apples, and also joining in the full end-to-end process of washing and sorting, mashing, and pressing juice.

A proper old-fashioned community of real humans getting together to help each other do something good and get something dome. Chatbots will never be able to do that (he writes...)

A pressing task indeed...

The summer season at the walled garden is well and truly over now, and even though this was a beautifully warm summery morning our task was very much an autumnal kind of tidy up.

Basically weeding. Clearing up an overgrown grassy area, and pulling up lots of brambles.

All in all a lovely revitalising session at the beautiful space. Come visit some time 😀

On a sunny Saturday in June, five Goodgymers, including Jason and David from Bristol, potted up to the walled garden at Newton St Loe for a session involving manure, weeds and a lot of broad beans.

We are regulars at the site. It is being transformed into a haven by the charity Grow for Life for people with anxiety, depression and isolation. They learn gardening and horticultural skills in a peaceful environment that can help them build confidence and perhaps even get jobs or set up their own businesses.

Whenever we visit we are astonished at the progress on the garden and this time was no exception. Summer had come with flowers in bloom across the site, the heady aroma of sweet peas, the pungent smell of sage and more. It seemed everywhere was bursting into flower and it was very much the safe, peaceful place that Grow for Life dreamed of.

It is, of course, the result of a lot of hard work, which brings us to our task. Our first job was to tackle some magnificent broad bean bushes. Planted last October, they had already produced a number of crops.. We had to harvest the remaining beans (except for one bush that was to be left) and then strip down the rest of the plant to form a green layer in the compost section we helped create last time we were in Newton St Loe. Secateurs at the ready, I've never put so much effort into preparing greenery for a compost heap - nor have I tried a raw broad bean before. Encouraged by Grow for Life's Wayne - it wasn't bad at all.

Then came a wheelbarrow trip to the stables next door to collect some horse manure to form the brown layer to the compost pile. Wayne was very excited that his previous pile was 70 degrees - allowing the compost to do its compost thing I suppose.

We rounded the session off with some serious weeding at the north wall. A useful tip from Wayne - weeds are the plants we don't like the look of.

We didn't go home empty handed - a posy of sweet peas and a handful of broad beans went down very nicely.

Thanks to Goodgymers Emily, Sarah, David and Jason plus Grow for Lifers Chris, Joel, Jane and Wayne.

Four Goodgymmers and an honorary four-legged Goodgymmer headed to Grow for Life's walled garden in Newton St Loe, in response to a shout for help to prepare for their open day. On arrival, Jo and Jer were tasked with moving an ENORMOUS pile of woodchip to make way for some new compost bays. Meanwhile, Ruth, Jane and Ted were dispatched round the village to deliver open day invitations to all the local houses. Once back at the garden, Jer took charge of building the compost bays out of Grow-for-Life favourite, pallets - ably assisted by Ruth, who proved skilled at finding the elusive end of the wire used to hold the structure together. Jo demonstrated their new-found dry stone walling skills, building a retaining wall for the steep slope at the bottom of the site and Jane got her weight training in by shifting 240kg of bentonite clay out of Wayne's trailer.

Overall, a satisfying and sunny mission. Grow for Life's open day is next week, on 17th and 18th May - do feel free to stop by, the garden is looking lovely. We'll be back with them on 29th June.