As autumn colours start to turn to winter, four Good Gym volunteers wearing woolly hats and gloves, ran and walked in the luckily dry evening to Manor Paddock where we met Luc for some gardening tasks. We welcomed back Rebecca (or Rib as she likes to be called) who hadn’t been for a few months due to an injury and met Sherman at the task.

During the task, we learnt from Luc about that Manor Paddock retirement housing complex has six flats and eighteen bungalows. We also chatted about local news about The Bevy fundraiser and the campaign against over-development on the Greenway.

With our head torches in place, we completed all the tasks including pruning the bay tree, pruning the lavender and cutting back and bagging other plants for the winter. Luc was so pleased as with Good Gym’s help, together we collected a total of eight bags of leaves!

Brighton goodgymers walked, jogged and cycled to Manor Paddock to meet with task owner Luc who quickly put us to work.

As always, Luc was prepared for our help and had numerous seperate garden jobs already set up with kneeers, tools, gloves and bags.

We got to work pulling up weeds that were taking over the flower beds, as well as raking up cut grass and cutting back plants in various stages of wildness. The difference that many hands made in a short time was unbelieveable and all jobs were completed.

Luc, as always, was very grateful to have our help as they normally tend the garden alone and it becomes overwhelming very quickly.

As a bonus we also managed to dodge the promised rain, despite the ominous sounding thunder that was our evenings musical accompaniment!

On a very warm Tuesday evening 9 GoodGymmers braved the long uphill jog to Manor Paddock - a lovely communal garden in sheltered housing that we visit regularly to help them keep the space tidy and accessible for residents.

On arrival we met some more GoodGymmers and our host Luc, who put us to task with a list of jobs for the session.

The main task for the evening was digging out two large Lavender bushes which had become quite unruly, and replacing them with some smaller plants for the summer season. It was tough going, but at least it smelled great!

The rest of us got our hands dirty helping with other jobs in the garden; collecting dried grass for mulching, cutting back conifer bushes and weeding in the raised beds.

Once we were done (and had made friends with resident Doggo Max!) most of us made our way back to our meeting point - enjoying the cooler temperatures and downhill elevation.

And a big welcome to first timer Jenny , we hope you enjoyed your first session with us :)

Apart from a few sunny days recently, at GoodGym Brighton it feels like it has not stopped raining for sessions and sessions. But did you know that going for a walk on a rainy day can be Good for you? Rosemary found the BBC article on How rain can make you happier and healthier and so, even this week, 9 happy GoodGym-ers went out running to help Manor Paddock social housing, where the resident Luc was waiting for us with a number of well organised tasks.

Manor Paddock House is an unusual-for-Brighton red brick and red tile dwelling nestling in a dell of the once Manor farming land, close by today to the Royal Sussex County Hospital and at the bottom of Sheepcote Valley. The House was built in 1932 but was converted to eight seniors' social housing flats in 1979. The communal garden area is flanked on two sides by stone wall, once stable walls: leftover from the previous era of Manor Paddock being a grazing field for military and racing horses (now a space for dog walkers and astro-turfed, floodlit sports pitches).

The House residents - especially the gardeners amongst them - are really grateful to Good Gym for helping, twice a year, to keep the weeds in check in this sycamore and birch-shaded, partly-wild garden; for planting bulbs and plants; for mulching fruit bushes, plus a pear and an apple tree, in Spring, and then pruning buddleia in Autumn.

We are all so lucky to enjoy this historic green space, and run to the Paddock where the horses once did!

Welcome Josh and Rosie. Hope you enjoyed this session, and were not so discouraged by the rain :-)

Yesterday afternoon the sky cleared just on time to provide us with good conditions for our autumnal gardening session at Manor Paddock, one of the senior residential housings that we served in Brighton & Hove. As usual, resident Luc welcomed us well prepared and massively thankful for the GoodGym superpower offered – without which the job would take him ages to do!

Several were the tasks needed, all done within less than an hour at the light of our powerful (more or less) headtorches! Planting bulbs, reshaping lavender bushes, weeding scrubs, collecting foliage, pruning buddleias and taking care of tomatoes plants’ beds.

Whom's running, whom's easy pacing because a doggy knee or cycling because of a stiff back pain (me, sigh!) … all we came and went off in full action!

Something to add to my gardening culture: Buddleia, also known as butterfly bush, is a perennial, semi-evergreen plant. Once it has flowered, it only loses its foliage for a short period of the year. The flowers of a buddleia generally appear from July to October. It's a robust shrub but can quickly become untidy if not pruned, with the flowers appearing so high that only the butterflies can enjoy them. Annual pruning keeps it in shape and helps produce more flowers, lower down.

Let’s see the results of our “pitch-perfect” buddleia pruning and lavender shaping next spring, shall we? 😊

(Literally) Directly from Italy with love, ... two-hours-delayed flight later … (grrr)…, I managed to arrive on time for our Tuesday group run to Manor Paddock House, a B&H council residential home in Kemptown with flats and bungalows and social activities including the management of a communal green area, nicely taken cared by its residents.
Our friend Luc welcomed us with well-prepared tasks to fit everybody, including the trimming of some grassland by new memberLucy who arrived on foot carrying a borrowed tool from the Brighton Tool Library. Welcome to newcomers Edel and Michael who followed me running, and Rob cycling, all happily swingling up and down local footpaths and parks in Kemptown before reaching our destination! Rebecca bit us on timing, digging already into a flower bed to make space for the new plants! Another fun evening that ended up with some gifted lavender to zest our return journey… just much colder than in Italy, and wet-ish… I guess the new plants will be happy 😊