On a lovely Autumn morning Claire, Julie and Sabir welcomed Stephanie to her first GoodGym mission at the GoodGym flowerbed to prepare it for winter.

Sabir got straight on with clearing the leaves whilst Claire, Julie and Stephanie tackled the weeds.

Bed tidied it was time for the fun part of planting all the spring bulbs. We planted lots of daffodils, tulips and alliums as well as a random selection of bulbs left over from Claire’s garden last year.

The last job was the hardcore gym part of our session. It involved 3 people walking along way through the gardens to the woodchip pile where we filled massive buckets up with wood chip and then walked them back. Having completed 3 runs we decided we’d gathered enough and hope to have a wheel barrow for next time.

The bed is looking lovely and should provide lots of Spring colour. 🌷🪻🌷

Claremont Gardens, in Surbiton, is where the group run took 7 GoodGymers on Tuesday night. Our tasks (in the dark!) were two-fold. To clear the pond, which is bursting with wildlife but choked by great pond sedge (not reeds, despite the heading!), and to scour the park for litter with our trusty headtorches.

Dave and Hazel suited up in waders and dove (not literally!) into the pond to tackle the sedge grasses crowding the water. They carefully saved the healthy ones to replant along the bank. Meanwhile, Emma cut back dead grasses and stacked the other plants on the side, giving any critters a chance to crawl back to their watery home.

Claire, Luke, and Marcos - glad to have a land-based job - tackled the litter pick, filling multiple bags with rubbish that had been carelessly tossed into the bushes - even though there were plenty of bins nearby! Rachel, our multitasker, enjoyed splitting her time between both tasks, lending a hand wherever it was needed.

Though the night was dark, the transformation of both the pond and park was crystal clear. The GoodGymers then returned the 2.5km back to Kingston.