Last night was a long overdue return to Marston Forest Garden. We've been involved with this fabulous project for a few years now - from infamous winter mornings digging the ground for the medicine circle, to scything in last year's sweltering heat wave, we've stuck our fingers into a lot of tasks here!

Last night's tasks included starting to dig out a new pond, weeding around some of the mid-sized fruit trees and shrubs, mulching pear and quince saplings, and scything and sickling (is that a verb?!) around the medicine circle. An hour flew by, and we were treated to Isobel's fabulous cookies at the end plus a bouquet of wild flowers for our newest GoodGymer Sheron and another for Kieran to celebrate his 99th Good Deed.

Welcome to GoodGym Sheron.

Hot off the bike from run directing at Florence Park Junior Parkrun, I was put to good use by the work party at Marston Forest Garden.

I was asked to chip in for a whole range of task, including:

• shovelling many bags and wheelbarrows of woodchip from the shared pile to the Forest Garden.
• helping repair and replenish the water for the nearest water trough to enable gardeners to keep their allotments watered in the hot weather.
• stripping and preparing cardboard (I have a stern hatred for sellotape now) for laying in the forest garden.
• scything away nettles and other long grasses, while not removing the tasty horseradish.
• weeding and laying woodchip and mulch around juvenile cherry trees and others trees nearby.

It was a good workout aiding Anthony and Isobel for their work in the forest garden and looked much better when I'd finished. Richard's golden retriever Aur (welsh for gold) was very able support for the task!

Their summer party is on Sunday 25th June so keep an eye out for that!

Four Goodgymers answered the call from Marston Forest Garden to remove an area of grasses and weeds with the aim of sowing other seeds.

Most of the session was spent uplifting the grass, roots and all, and filling up the compost heap. This was aided by some excellent vegan carrot flapjack from Isabelle meaning we managed to clear the area ready to rake and sow the seeds at a later date.

It turned out many hands do in fact make light work!

While we were digging, there was a small group doing a survey of the worms in the Forest Garden as a way to check for the soil quality. It turns out there are many different types of worms (size, shape, anatomy) even in such a small area. We unearthed quite a few larger varieties in the area we were working, although this maybe helped to feed the local birds particularly a robin that seemed very interested in our work!

Anthony is always full of interesting snippets of information and talked a little about removing brambles and weeds with his trusty Lazy Dog tool, which turns out to be the company name rather than work-shy mutts. Jenny took up the additional challenge to help Anthony remove some very persistent weeds and bramble roots in another section of the Forest Garden after the introduction to the Lazy Dog.

Marston Forest Garden is a part of a larger collection of groups under the banner of Marston Community Gardening. There are various orchards, chickens, allotment spaces, an Eco Hub plus much more so read about it on their website via the link above or via their community group that can be found on Facebook.

Welcome to both Jenny and Jamie for your very first Goodgym Oxford experience! I hope you enjoyed the session and hope to see you at another session soon!

Heat wave weeding

In a nice (if worrying) change from the 2020 trend of getting soaked to the skin and covered in sticky mud at Marston Forest Garden, lately we've been basking in sunshine on our tasks there.

This week's plan was to weed around lots of the saplings and fruit bushes to stop them getting choked by perennial weeds. Bind weed, thistles, brambles and nettles were the main targets, with bonus points for Mares Tail which seems to be having a good year. A power hour of weeding and de-tangling got a lot of the plants de-weeded, uncovering wild strawberries, blackcurrant bushes and many more. We also grabbed a couple of loads of woodchip to replenish the mulch around a few plants.

This week's fun fact courtesy of Bethan: the bindweed flower is a symbol of affection. We almost feel bad for pulling so much of it up this spring and summer.

Weeding hour over we gathered under the oak tree for watermelon, biscuits, brownies and chat before heading off running, walking and cycling to seek shade and/or a bit of river to jump in.

Prize for most enthusiastic GoodGymer this week goes to Cassie the pup, who seemed to have a wonderful evening running around and keeping us all in line.

Congratulations to Holly and Kieran for reaching their 100th and 50th GoodGym Good Deeds (respectively). I failed to spot it ahead of time, but also congratulations to Sophie who did her 10th good deed with us yesterday.

Welcome to GoodGym Oxford Ellen.

Big THANK YOU to Alice for gathering up the runners and leading them on the route to MFG after I got delayed.

Marston Forest Garden has come a long way since we first helped out there way back in 2020. It's transformed from head high brambles to a well-planned network of shrubs and trees which (once well-established) will form an edible forest.

Today we dug out nettle roots, laid cardboard for weed-suppression, moved mounds of debris to the compost heaps, and broke out the axe to cut sticks down to size for mulching new areas. (Axe use is the best stress buster known to humans.)

Welcome to GoodGym Matthieu!

Inspired by Monty Don and armed with spades, forks and gloves, several Goodgymers were put to task to plant a few more trees in Marston Forest Garden.

We followed a detailed step by step guide and demonstration provided by Anthony from the Forest Garden. This was to ensure the young trees would get the best start in life and provide tasty fruit for years to come. Clearing the top woodchip and digging out the soil was just the start...

The space should be a square, approximately 1 m square, and a spade length depth, ideally putting the dug-out soil onto cardboard pieces to prevent it getting mixed up with the woodchip. After removing any pesky bindweed or sturdy bramble roots, the young tree should be placed centrally with the roots just below the level of the ground (using a handy stake as a guide). Removing any large soil clumps, the finer soil can be added from the outside-in to fill in between the roots and to reduce the occurrence of any air pockets. Once all the soil is added, the soil should be compressed down, again from the outside-in. Cardboard is added on top and fresh woodchip added as mulch to aid early tree growth. As the trees were quite sturdy, no stakes were used but wiring was added around the outside to prevent local wildlife from getting a head start on eating the vegetation.

We planted several different types of trees, including pear, quince, plum and walnut trees plus others. We also cleared some more areas and started the process of adding wiring around the outside of the planted trees. The dog was also very helpful in keeping morale high and checking that we were following the precise tree planting instructions!

After all that hard work, it was time for cake: Colin the Caterpillar from Anwen, macaroons, gingerbread stars from Isabella from the Forest Garden volunteers and tasty flapjack made by Bethan. Cake is always welcome, particularly when building up such an appetite at the task, but the special occasion this time was to celebrate Ben getting married the day before! Thank you so much for the personalised Goodgym t-shirt and the card!!