Despite the slightly lower numbers for tonight's group run we had lots to celebrate. First we welcomed Emily to her first Goodgym session, despite her only arriving in York a week ago. We celebrated Abigail and Claire both achieving 200 good deeds. We celebrated Rebecca being crowned August's Goodgymer of the month, having completed lots of Goodgym tasks in her first few months since joining, including some Goodgym tourism. We also congratulated Emma on completing the Vale of York half marathon and Liv and Mia on completing the Great North Run. (We also thought there may also have been a few other York Goodgymers doing a race at the weekend and having a few drinks along the way.) Finally we celebrated World Ampersand Day by going round and naming our favourite food and drink pairings worthy of the & symbol. After all the congratulations we headed to the task at Holgate Community Garden. We did two main jobs, cutting a circle of grass and weeds away around the trees and tidying the beds nearest the road. Abigail, Leanne and Jenna joined in once they had finished staging a teddy birth for Abigail. As her due date is in three days we were hoping that we didn't have a real birth to contend with. Claire and Laura Bennett went down to the Holgate Allotments and brought back two barrows of bark chip for putting on top of the soil circles around the trees. Imran and Jenna did a great job clearing all the brambles on the beds. We managed to complete both tasks before doing some training related fitness, including squats while we were stopped for leaves on the line, lunges for shovelling coal, creating tunnel arches for the other team's train to go through and then finishing with all aboard the train for a photo and some delicious chocolate and courgette cake from Claire before running back to base.

We started by splitting into three groups, team rake, team weed and team compost. The council had recently cut the grass so David ad Rebecca managed to rake and take a lot of the cuttings from the main part of the garden to the compost heap. Cara and Laura rescued the compost bins which were spilling out in a big heap as the panels had come off the front. We cleared all the compost from the front of the bins, reset the log walkway and used the logs to wedge the fronts back on where they were too warped to slot in properly. The weeds were also coming up in the beds again so Claire and Paul managed to tidy them up and take out some of the large plants that had fallen over. Rebecca, Cara and Laura then helped out with the weeding while David finished the raking.

We joined some of the local residents to help upkeep the community garden. Leanne and David started by collecting some water and then Leanne raked up the rest of the straw-like grass cuttings and found some new green plants coming through. David weeded some of the beds and around the train. Laura searched removed brambles and cut back the raspberry canes that had dried out to allow more space for the green ones to flourish. At the end Ruth from Abundance showed is how to thin out the apple and plum trees and what we need to do to wire up the trees trained along the wall. Despite the heat we steamed through the tasks and got a large amount done.

The grass had been cut at the garden and left in a thick layer preventing new growth so we made a good headway with raking and gathering it up to give the grass a chance to regrow underneath. Paul raked it into piles while Laura piled it into the barrow to pile up on one side of the garden. Laura also helped the garden group with the watering. David came later and helped Laura for an additional half hour to rake some more of the grass and clear all of the piles of grass.

We made great progress this afternoon tidying up the beds and planting a few new plants at Holgate Community Garden. We welcomed Joss and Rebecca to their first Goodgym task. Leanne kindly brought a puncture repair kit so Leanne and David started by mending the puncture in the wheelbarrow tyre which made it a lot easier to dispose of the weeds once we'd pulled them out. Everyone else got to work weeding the beds and pulling out the cornflowers that had died and Joss trimmed along the edges. Amy planted some celeriac seedlings once we had space for them. By the end the beds looked much tidier and there was much more room for the vegetable plants and flowers to grow.

Thanks to a local resident putting a hose over his wall we were able to keep a continuous flow of watering cans and buckets going to and fro and in an hour we had given everything in the beds a good drink. We also planted the last squash and courgette plants and removed a diseased honeysuckle.