This evening a bunch of gardening Goodgymers indulged in a spot of speedy planting.

Teaming up with Alistair from Marston Community Garden we continued our bulb plabting project around Marston. The idea is to cover green spaces on the drive into Oxford with bulbs to create a colourful welcome to the city come the spring.

With limited light and time we cracked on quickly and managed to work our way through several buckets of bulbs.

Congratulations to Alistair on Marston Community Gardens recent award!

More congrats to Oliver for reaching 10 good deeds and to Fred for reachinf 50!! Thank you to Fred for the delicious cookies. Almost made up for my lck of posh pesto.....

A warm welcome to Marta visiting us from Greenwich. Please come and see us again next time you're in Oxford!

One more planting session in 2023 folks!

Autumn means we pivot away from our summer of gardening and nature reserve tasks and resume our monthly deep cleaning of the food bank on Cowley Road.

The day-to-day tasks at the food bank take up all the time of volunteers, so there is never time to shift shelving and give everywhere a really thorough clean. Over the last couple of years we have become efficient at working our way round the main hall of the foodbank from October to March, deep cleaning a different section each month.

Last night we started our process. Splitting our team between kitchen and main hall, we shifted and cleaned crates and shelving, swept the floors, mopped the floors, sorted through fresh produce to ditch anything going off (some VERY mouldy mushrooms!), cleaned fridges, disinfected the walls, and took out food waste. A one hour flash-mob can make light of a deep clean.

Great work team!

Last night we made a return to the garden of the Highfield Unit after a 2 year hiatus. The Highfield is the young people's mental health in-patient unit at Warneford Hospital. Some of the garden has recently been redesigned into a much more inviting space, which was lovely to see.

The garden is divided into 3 sections, so we divided into a trio of teams to weed, prune and lop. We weeded and pruned outside the dining room to give a clearer view of the lovely new garden design, lopped bramble and pulled up nettles in the mosaic garden, and weeded and pruned the shaded corridor space outside some of the bedrooms.

We amassed a large pile of clippings and prunings and worked up a bit of a sweat, so were grateful for the water and biscuits we were given at the end.

Welcome to GoodGym Catriona (Kitty).

With thunder and lightning forecast, and GoodGymers dropping like flies with summer colds, we felt very fortunate to muster a dozen or so helpers and to complete our task in sunshine last night.

Our task was a return visit to Dean Court Community Centre to de-weed the courtyard car park. We detangled bindweed, pruned buddleia, litter picked, weeded planters, pulled up nettles, and generally swept and scraped away all the messier elements.

Delighted to be joined by not 1, but 2 enthusiastic GoodGym pups. Always a joy to have Django and Cass in attendance.

Well done on your 50th Good Deed Sophie, and thank you for the yummy cakes.

Welcome to GoodGym Katie!