GoodGym Barnet – Barnet Climate Action Week tiny forest Barnet

A beautiful day to get together at Mutton Brook as part of Barnet Climate Action Week, combining a little practical work, citizen science and a chance to introduce more people to our local Tiny Forests.

Starting at 11am, Richard and Subhamboth local residents, were already on site and quickly got stuck into some litter picking after a chat about the four Tiny Forests.

The original Tiny Forest is now well established, but the three newer forests have endured a brutal summer and are showing signs of stress, with some struggling trees and plenty of weeds.

These three forests are particularly interesting because each has a different soil preparation method. Looking up the slope, the middle plot uses biochar, the right-hand plot follows the standard Miyawaki method, and the left-hand plot uses a simpler, no-dig approach incorporating cardboard. On general inspection, the middle biochar forest appears to be showing the strongest growth, although proper measurements will tell us more. Victoria said Yes lots of fun. Like high school science class again haha!

’innovative approach to growing trees with the help of biochar was recently featured on BBC Countryfile at Blenheim Palace on 1 February 2026. You can find out more on BBC iPlayer.https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002qwy0

Roman & Victoria were both new to the Tiny Forest project and got stuck into our citizen science work, identifying trees, recording their positions along a transect and measuring their diameters. This helps us monitor growth and understand their potential for carbon capture. We’ll share the data with Earthwatch and hopefully continue these measurements over the coming months.

It was also a lovely opportunity to chat about our local community and the wider work GoodGym gets involved with, supporting green spaces, community groups and projects that encourage people to get outdoors and take practical action.

And, as has become something of a GoodGym tradition, we rounded things off with a little frisbee throwing and a runaround for anyone who fancied it!

A big thank you to everyone who came along. A lovely mix of practical volunteering, learning something new and enjoying our local green spaces together. That’s what GoodGym is all about!

I went along to help Mrs P, who really loves her garden but struggles to stay on top of it because she's recovering from a stroke. My job was to give her flowerbed a bit of TLC. I dug and loosened the soil, took out roots and weeds, and applied a good helping of compost. Now it's ready to plant some bulbs later in the autumn. I also filled some planters with compost and have everything a good drink of water. Mrs P was very grateful. We chatted a bit, she told me about her life and recovery from the stroke, and I left. Looking forward to seeing her garden flourish!

Three Goodgymers attended the Windermere Avenue Play street in Finchley to help locals manage this monthly summer event. For a few hours on a Sunday the street is closed to cars, allowing the local children and adults to roam freely and socialise on the street. Goodgym helped the organisers to staff the barriers at the end of the street, to ask motorists to go the long way round, or to let those through who live on the street. The unseasonably good weather continues, so it was a gloriously sunny day for everyone to enjoy the freedom of the street.