18 Goodgymers ran 4km to help Thornhill Square Gardens with some summer gardening

Thanks for coming guys, welcome along to Emilie whose first time it was last night.

In the news this week:

1. 85 GoodGymers from all over the UK gathered in Stratford upon Avon at the weekend for the annual shindig, we discussed the future of GoodGym and talked new ideas. Some follow up information will be available soon.
2. On Sunday Damian led July's monthly long run in Finsbury Park area, Dom will be leading August's Long Run on 25th - see full details here.
3. If you ever spot or know of any potential tasks in Islington and beyond please let me know.

After the intro we warmed up and headed 2km via the back streets to Thornhill Square Gardens. We've been helping Anna and the brilliant community gardeners here for a number of years, they always appreciate our help. Like many local parks, council funding has been cut and the importance of volunteers is only increasing.

Our tasks were as follows:

• A team of four delicately de-headed any dead rose flowers, cutting just below the leaf means that the flower is more likely to grow back. Over the 30 minutes the team covered all four plots of roses.
• A team of six shovelled, wheelbarrowed and spread three huge bags of mulch over two plots - nice!
• Everyone else tackled a huge plot of those pesky thistles. These guys are thorny and have big roots, but armed with clippers the team cut everything back and filled four huge bags for recyling.

All the good!

Over 40 minutes we made a huge impact for our local community, well done guys! We finished by taking a group picture, having a jammy dodger and thanking Anna.

Once we'd arrived back to base we did an extra long stretch and ate more biscuits - yum!

Next week we are returning to help Single Homeless Project lift lots of woodchip - sign up here.

PB out

With Paul off conquering the West Highland Way, Frances led a small but perfectly formed group of 12 (including newcomers Jasmine and Sanne) to the Single Homelessness Project in Highbury to help them shift some woodchip. This is a great London-wide charity working to prevent homelessness and help vulnerable and socially excluded people to transform their lives, with several sites in Islington.

After some initial confusion over the precise location of the required shifting, we located the pile and got stuck in, with half the group forking and shoveling the woodchip into bags, and the other half forming a chain to take it through the house and into the back garden.

It looked like a daunting task at first, but we made steady progress, and with the end in sight we took a quick poll and decided we would stay until the job was done! In the end we only needed an extra five minutes or so to get the woodchip firmly forked, bagged and its rightful place.

We had time for a quick photo before Steve Coman led us on a speedy route back to the Emirates and we had some chocolate digestive thins to celebrate.

Paul will be back next week, and we'll be off to Thornhill Square Gardens - details here!