A Sunny run and some serious shovelling: GoodGym gets Grounded 🌞🏃🌱

It was one of those evenings yesterday — the kind where the sun’s shining, the city is buzzing, and the pavements stretch out before us. We gathered by Temple Station to greet some new faces - welcome to the group Emily and Siobhan to your first session! Lovely to have you join us. After a quick warm up we took off along the river, weaving between after-work revellers spilling onto the Embankment, and soaking up every golden ray.

Our destination was a community garden with a view so iconic it could distract even the most focused of GoodGymmers. Tower Bridge at golden hour? You don't get much better than that. We didn't have too much time to admire the view though— there was work to be done!

We arrived to find the ever-enthusiastic team already grafting away, tools at the ready, and preparing for their reinforcements (us) to jump in. Under the guidance of Grounded — a brilliant social enterprise using gardening as ecotherapy — our job was to help transform a neglected patch into a green oasis of calm and healing for the city’s residents.

We split into teams with some of us lugging bags of compost up the stairs, others transporting around sacks of Leca (clay pebbles good for drainage, although it could also pass as the name of an Indie band from the 90s), while the rest of us found ourselves elbows-deep in soil emptying old beds before setting up a brand-new irrigation system. The heat of the evening just highlighted how important watering is!

It was sweaty work, but spirits were high - the combination of transforming a garden and seeing the progress already being made was inspiring.

If that wasn't enough of a full body workout we just had time to squeeze in a fitness blast to finish, this time a strength workout with a twist. While one of us ran a lap around the garden in the stopwatch role, the rest of us got stuck into push-ups, planks and tricep dips. Thankfully, nobody pulled the “I’m just walking this lap” trick, and we even inspired a few people sitting nearby to join in — next time we'll get them to help carry the bags of leca too! Anyone else got shaky arms today or is that just me?

All that was left was the run back, with the skyline lit up like a movie set. After all that hard graft, it never looked more beautiful.

Well done everyone — you smashed it. Next week, we’re heading to the oldest youth club in the world - see you there!