Three GoodGymers came out on a Sunday morning to help the residents of Balfour Street housing co-op. The residents have been working on the garden since the start of the year but needed some additional help to tackle a particularly overgrown area. The residents kept the drinks and snacks flowing while we got to work, making lots of progress in the hour and a half session.

A beautiful day and a truly incredible selection of snacks got us off to a great start to this task - if you haven't tried homemade hot lemonade on a cold day, I would really recommend changing that asap. Then we got stuck into assisting the volunteer team to tear, saw and drag all the crawlers off any walls in the garden 🌱🧱✖️

This got more satisfying as the morning went on, because by the end, we'd given the green blanket over the wall a short back and sides, and only the greenery at the very top of the wall was left. So we played tug of war with it, except, er, cooperatively rather than tugging in opposite directions - Gemma, Daryl and Steve pushed the mass over the wall while Marianne and I pulled it. When it came down the new ground level was about a metre higher on top of what we'd dragged down 😅

Meanwhile, Lindy and Isaac had been clearing the walls in the ~secret garden~, and it was getting loads more light! Plus the neighbours will be very glad to have less invasive plants over their border, now ✨

We finished the day wrenching the tree-trunk-sized roots of the crawlers away from the wall, which was a pure muscle job 💪

Seven GoodGymers including Jessica who came for her first good deed with GoodGym after meeting the team on Wednesday night, came to 67 Balfour Street.

Sam thought they would be tidying up the community garden in front of it, but 67 Balfour Street is the entrance to the housing co-op's community garden and events space.

They were met by Steve and David, who invited all of them in once everyone had arrived.

There were plenty of treats, snacks and beverages to join before, during and after our session, but the main task that we came here for was to sort out this community garden.

The first task in order was to get the litter pickers out and do a thorough sweep of the garden as we found various items that the foxes brought back in from their adventures nearby. Although, Ed and Paulin were tasked with pruning back a hedge.

Ed couldn't stay away from a pruning task as he found himself with Daryl stripping back the ivy that had overgrown into the neighbour's garden (and they complained about it).

Joaquin was quietly sorting out the various plant pots that were scattered over the garden by the foxes whilst Gemma and Jessica pruned back branches that were in the way of the garden path.

A lot was done within the hour and Steve will be calling us away for any big projects. For now, we will leave it to the residents of the co-op.