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.

Liverpool Sunflowers had asked Goodgym to help out on a task tonight. We arrived to find our instructions all set out. We love clear guidelines and Mat who had arrived first held up the instructions for us to read as we entered.

One thousand envelopes each needed to have two sunflower seeds put in and sealed.
It's one of those tasks that with 11 of us took a small amount of time, but if one person had been doing it would have taken so long. We were all congratulating ourselves on how quickly we had completed the task and how little space the thousand envelopes took up when Heetu found the second box of envelopes .... yep we had only done 500. Phew much as we love to come to Sunflowers we would have been embarrassed to have had to return having done half a job.

So task completed we left into the dark night (not long til it will be light at task end).

Welcome to Jes and Deekay on their first task look forward to seeing you again soon.

It was an early start for a group of GoodGymmers this fine Sunday morning as we came together to set up the Otterspool prom water station for the Liverpool half marathon. Three GoodGym members were taking part, Vikky, Roz and Emma, while Sallyann was running the Bath half marathon the same day. We were looking forward to cheering on our friends along with the rest of the runners, and got going setting up our tables either side of the route. As we prepared by unpacking crates of water bottles from a shipping container, opening the bottles and screwing the tops back on so they were ready to hand out, there was a growing sense of anticipation as we waited to see the first runners pass by. Not many of the leading runners wanted water, leading to the teams on each side of the path competing to hand out water to those who did and jokingly boasting about our bottle tallies. This was soon forgotten as we began to get steadily busier and were very quickly deluged with runners as the main body of the race passed by. Even though our stock of prepared bottles filled three trestle tables, it vanished very quickly and everyone was working flat out either unpacking bottles or handing them out. We were so overwhelmed that eventually we had to give up unscrewing them, something that has never happened before in our time running the water station for this race - there were 9 thousand runners this year, an increase of about 2 thousand on previous years, and it really made a difference! Despite how intense it was we kept up a cheer for all the athletes as they passed, and when we spotted Roz, Emma and Vikky we made sure to shout extra loudly for them. As the race drew to a close we turned our attention to our next big task - collecting up all the bottles the runners had thrown behind them. Charmaine, who happened to be passing by on a walk, got stuck in to help which was amazing, and even signed up as a GoodGym member later that day - a big thank you, Charmaine! With the extra help we powered through the clean-up and collected a staggering 52 rubbish sacks full of plastic bottles. We were all quite sobered to see the scale of plastic waste and are really hoping to see a more sustainable solution for next year's run. As for this year though, it was hard work but good fun and made enjoyable by the camaraderie and conversation of the GoodGym team - huge thanks and kudos to everyone!

Despite a last minute change of plans 7 Goodgymmers met on Mulgrave street, and, armed with litter pickers, headed out into the night.

We focused our efforts along Princes Avenue. At first it seemed that there wasn't too much littered to be collected, but we managed to get a whopping 8 bags!

It was great to be joined by new comer Mark. Not only did we have a great time chatting and picking, but it was great to see how big an impact we had. Well done everyone!

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.