We were re-wilding St Mary Magdalene churchyard and burial grounds. These burial grounds have been decommissioned a long time ago, but Ken still gave us diggers a warning, that it is unknown how many graves are still in the ground! Thankfully we didn't need to dig too deep and it was just a small patch, where seeds were strewn across. We will need to see how this patch will look like in the next month. Also, a big welcome to Olivia, who joined us for the first time!

It was the second task of the day for much of the group, who had been lopping and raking their way round Ham Lands in the morning, so we were very grateful when the vicar asked if we’d like a cup of tea while we worked.

We didn’t quite beat the kettle, but it was a fairly quick task planting geraniums at the base of the war memorial and weeding the paths to leave it all looking much tidier for the Remembrance Sunday services the following day.

When the tea arrived, we were almost finished but it was just the boost we needed to get us to the end as the weather got increasingly chilly. And of course, the biscuits were a very welcome bonus.

Three GoodGymers and one member of the St Mary Magdalene Church congregation turned up in light rain on Sunday morning to deadhead the cyclamen flowers planted around the Great War Memorial outside the Church. As the organ played in the church Ken showed us the technique to twist the spent flowers to the corm base of the cyclamen. After 1 hour and 15 minutes we had deadheaded all 250 plants and swept up the surrounding York stone and sang out last hymn for the day.

In a few weeks’ time we will enjoy another flush of our brilliant floral display which was all planted by the GoodGym on 1 October.

Following on from our epic root dig at the war memorial at St Mary Magdalene Church in Richmond centre, we returned to continue the good work in time for Rememberance services.

Four GoodGymers met 19 volunteers from the community at St Mary Magdalene Church to finish the restoration project. This involved a huge task of removing two tonnes of excess soil which then had to be scattered thinly and discretely throughout the church yard so it was invisible as Ken said “like feeding chickens.”

With the excess soil discreetly spread, the group set about planting for both now ans seasons to come. In total the group planted an amazing 3,100 bulbs of snowdrops, tulips, alliums, and daffodils and 258 plants of cyclamen, geraniums, deer ferns and Mexican daisies. All followed up with a good sweep to clean up from all that digging!

It was a task that truly earned the GoodGym title with a lot of physical work. An extra special mention goes out to Anita and Sam who stayed late and slaved away to ensure the project was all done by 2pm. A very satisfying result from before to after which makes a real difference to this space in the community.

9 GoodGym members joined several local volunteers from St Mary Magdalene Church on a beautifully sunny Saturday morning in central Richmond to start work on restoring the setting to the Grade II listed War Memorial in the church graveyard.

Ken was running the task and briefed us on cutting down the 6 cypress trees that were obscuring and threatening the monument. These were recently small clipped shrubs but will soon grow over 20m tall and were already over 2.5m tall having grown a metre in the past year alone. There was a risk that these would undermine the foundations to the Memorial and were already obscuring the words.

In 15 minutes we had cut all the cypress down and thought we were done. But no, the roots all need to come out and we needed to cut all the piles of branches into small bits to fit into a 1 ton dumpy bag for garden waste composting. That was the hard part! The group got stuck in though, with Peter taking on the fearsome roots with help from Chris, Sofia (on her first mission!) and Sam (and the Vicar and one of her team!) while most others got on with chopping up the branches, occasionally jumping in the bag to pack them down.

It was a great task and we will be returning in late October to replant with a range of seasonal perennials and flowers in time for Remembrance Day - sign up here! https://www.goodgym.org/v3/sessions/restoration-of-the-war-memorial-and-gardens-at-st-mary-magdelen-92cf9788-22bf-4f39-82f9-cc3f412b942b