This week we were back on Park Lane with Urban GreenUp ahead of the project being judged for a competition.

The initial plan was to cover the sight with mulch to keep the weeds at bay and allow the plants to flourish. However, we arrived to find Elaine with a distinct lack of mulch - it had not arrived in time. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as we were able to weed and litter pick the sight ready for the mulch to go down next week!

It was wonderful to be working in daylight once again and definitely made it easier to identify the weeds!

It didn't take long for us to tackle the bulk of the weeds. Well done everybody. Excited for the mulching next week!

It was our first session of the season with Friends Of Everton Park. John had given us a slightly different venue and task for the first session. The Community Gardens is a hidden haven which is just full of plants. Its an amazing place that feels quite special when you walk in - not least as you know the hard work put in from all the regular people that tend this space week in week out.

The garden uses large raised beds which have been built using large thick substantial wooden planks however as happens the wood is starting to show its age and had started to rot in places.

Our task was to dismantle the raised bed - barrow the soil to the main soil heap and take apart the wooden frame being careful of the large nails that held them together- leaving the space flattened ready to be rebuilt.

As we were so many we had an over flow team working on a second raised bed and of course some friendly competition ensued. Lets just say the first team had more people more wheelbarrows and Jake who was running back and forth with the barrows and the second team had less people less wheelbarrows and a certain report writer who is renowned for chatting a lot.....

Our hour up and we had almost completed two raised beds - or should that be depleted? It was a really satisfying task great fun and company as always and lovely to be back in Everton again. Welcome to Tasha on her first task - look forward to seeing you again.

A lovely task kept our goodgymmers busy on this cold - oh such biting cold - Saturday morning.

The task was requested by one of our own; Goodgymmer Vikky is also part of the "Friends of St James' Gardens" community group. As Vikky is a Goodgym member, she was one step ahead on providing all the information and made listing the task an absolute breeze, which was super helpful for Bekah as it was her first time arranging and listing a task.

St James Gardens sit in the grounds of the majestic Liverpool Cathedral, and are a much loved but recently neglected community space. The gardens have considerable historic significance, having been used as a cemetery in a previous life, and include the graves of William Huskisson, Kitty Wilkinson, and Sir William Brown amongst many others. The Friends Of group are determined to slowly but surely provide some TLC, and so we went along to what will hopefully be the first of many sessions to look after this beautiful site, which also has a natural spring used by some locals to fill up water bottles!

The main agenda was spreading out Snowdrops and wild garlic. Sian & Vikky took one side of the garden, and Sally Ann, Melody and Bekah focused on some central patches. We had the opportunity to be creative in deciding how to spread the bulbs, and made some lovely waves and shapes which we'll see when the bulbs are in full bloom. The Friends Of had provided tools including a cylindrical spade, which perfectly removed cylindrical clods of earth, so we placed bulbs in a round hole before satisfyingly popping the perfect clods back in. The group were quite taken with this system, so much so that the much-admired clods inspired today's titular pun!

After two hours of enjoyable labour, the team called it a day and were glad to head in from the cold. We look forward to seeing the snowdrops in full bloom, and will be back to help this fantastic group continue to look after these valuable gardens.

One of our regular, and favourite, tasks: The Mulgrave Street Project, lead by the indomitable Khan, was preparing to go national!

A camera crew arrived bright and early on Saturday morning to document the amazing work of Khan and his volunteers at the Urbanscape Community Garden, for a new ITV1 show: Alan Titchmarsh's Gardening Clublaunches this month.

The new series, produced by Penny Lane Entertainment, is part-funded by GreenThumb, and will see Alan Titchmarsh, along with a team of experts, providing practical gardening tips for both aspiring and experienced gardeners

New GoodGymer, Melody arrived for her first session and was soon planting and weeding enthusiastically.

With fellow GoodGymers, Bekah, Ellie and Aditi, we worked through the morning to plant, weed and litterpick.

The garden looked amazing in the morning sunlight, extra shrubs and bushes were planted and trays of primroses added splashes of colour to the borders. And even though the sunshine soon gave way to persistent rain, it did not dampen our spirits.

The camera crew worked around us, capturing the community spirit, interviewing Khan, community volunteer Lizzie...and even had a few words with me.

By midday, cold, wet, but happy with our efforts, we tidied up and left Khan chatting with our newest GoodGymer, Tariq, who had dropped by to check out the garden.

Remember, to see the results of our labours, look out for the new TV series: Alan Titchmarsh's Gardening Club...

For tonight's task, a group of Goodgymmers teamed up with friends from Litter Clear Volunteer and It'sYour World.Liverpool, led by the fabulous Vicky, to work our combined magic on the L8 Cliff Green park.

This is a small community green nestled amongst houses that could be a real local asset, but has sadly been neglected for far too long and had become an overgrown dumping ground covered in litter and dog dirt when Vicky decided to rescue it. She told us that on LCV's first litterpick of the area they collected a huge 25 bags, and they had clearly done a good job as our volunteers on litterpicking duty today had to look hard to find litter in the park, so much so that Sallyann and Ellie went off on an adventure collecting litter from the surrounding streets. We were just starting to get worried not having seen them for a while when they turned the corner carrying bulging bags of litter as a souvenir of their travels around Smithdown.

Vicky is good at keeping everyone busy and there was plenty for everyone to get involved in apart from litterpicking; the main task of the day was to clear the grass that had overgrown the path, so everyone got stuck in to digging, shoveling and scraping up clods of grass and earth, or collecting them up and tidying the path edges.

Together we managed to clear the entire path on both sides, and we were all amazed at how much wider the path really was compared to how it had seemed when we arrived. It's always good to be able to see the difference we've made at the end of a session and even in the dark that was really clear and a great reward for our hard work.

Vicky told us that the local residents are now beginning to plan how they are going to use the green when it is in better condition and that they would like to set up a bouncy castle there in school holidays for the children to play on. It will be great to see this green space being reclaimed by the community and hopefully becoming a safe and fun play space.

Well done to Katy and Gerard for their first GoodGym session!

Watch this space for the next installment!