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 😊

Followers of the Legendary Monty Don and Gardener's World will know it is now the time of year to cut back in the garden. Luc from Manor Paddock welcomed us into the residents' fantastic gardens and put us to work! Going back to the roots...

There was Lavender and Budleigh to be trimmed and dandelions to be pulled up as well as weeding. The smell of the cut flowers was stunning in the Autumn evening.

With so many head torched Goodgymers it took no time at all to get Luc's gardening jobs done! And, seeing as this was our last Tuesday evening run for a while, we headed to the pub to work our biceps and triceps(!)

After welcoming back Michael (me!) to the Good Gym community, we set off for this week’s destination – the grounds of the Manor Paddock Seniors Housing Scheme. Our run took us up the steep hill of Edward Street and then along Eastern Road, passing Brighton College and the Royal Sussex Hospital on our left and views of the terraces running down to the sea on our right.

When we arrived, Manor Paddock’s resident, Luc, showed us around their beautiful grounds – a green and flower-filled space, with rose bushes, honeysuckle, and unfortunately a whole lot of weeds! Luke explained that, while the council came to mow the grass, everything else that needed caring for was left to the residents.

The headline was: weeds out – mulch in! So we quickly set to, with rakes, forks, trowels and a lovely mixture of compost and earth. Tara and Katharine got their mulch on at the North end of the garden while the rest of us gave the grounds a good old makeover.

Many hands make mulch work so, before the hour was up, we’d cleared and fed all of the beds, even finding time to plant some gooseberry and clementine bushes. Tara then led us through a quick fitness session, where we all surprised ourselves with the number of sit-ups we could do in three minutes, before we headed to the Sidewinder in Kemptown for a well-deserved pint (or two!).

Welcome to Brighton Goodgym to Daniel, great to have you along for your first run and good deed!

We started our run as a four, got caught in the nick of time by Rebecca picked up Katharine & Amroalong the way and by the time we got to Manor Paddock we were the magnificent seven!

Manor Paddock is a council run senior’s housing scheme with a garden looked after by resident Luc. Much of the garden had been taken over by onion bulbs which Luc had removed and our task was to replace them with a selection of nice bulbs including narcissi, crocosmia and tulips. Armed with dibbers and trowels we set to work and were advised by Luc that dibbing was best! Meanwhile Daniel & Amro competed for top spot in the Great Brighton Rake Off and bagged up loads of leaves from the lawn to make compost.

A quick fitness session of ramp sprints and squats followed, and eventually some of us actually warmed up!

On an unseasonably mild October evening 8 Goodgymmers made their way to Manor Paddock, a Senior's Housing Scheme with a charming garden.

Resident Luc set us to work on a variety of tasks including lopping lavender, pruning budleia (go hard!), clearing beds and digging in lime to stop the soil being so alkaline. For the first time this autumn we had an outside task entirely in the dark but there was plenty of ambient light from the building and the bat light made it's AW21 debut.

As always Luc was very impressed with how much we got done and no doubt we will be back again soon.

A quick partnered workout of 2 minute rounds of squats and everybody's favourite, burpees rounded off a mellow autumn evening, before we parted company having once again made the world a little bit better and ourselves a little bit fitter!