A team of three GoodGym heroes - Emily, Saber, Marie-Noëlle - met at the community garden this morning, joining forces with Susan and her loyal volunteers. Our mission: clearing and preparing an ancient compost bin space into a new planter for spring. An additional new bed was cleared, sowed with future flowery glory, and made a nofly zone for the resident chickens who seemed to be plotting a takeover. Elsewhere, compost chopping and turning and the composter zone tidied, followed by a watery marathon! pond restocking with water from the water rollers, then refilling the rollers with river water.
And finally gutter surgery, clearing out blockages to ensure the water tanks can capture precious rainwater

Last night a large group of GoodGymers made their way to Canbury Gardens for some autumnal chores. At the Canbury Community Garden, Susan and Marie-Noëlle split the team in three groups. Dave, Lordi, Anna, Kento moved the tyre towers around & re-filled them with fresh compost. A second group - Luke, Saber, Marcos - dug and turned the compost in the two large compost heap areas whilst a third group - MN & Tom - collected water from the river to refill the garden's water containers. We finished our mission with some light pruning and praking of the vegetable beds.

Meanwhile over at the GoodGym flowerbed Louise, Claire and Levita filled a massive sack with all the leaves that were covering the flowerbed and hiding some plants. Saber and Anna then joined us and helped Levita collect water from the river to water the plants and keep them going until it rains. We ended the session planting a few spring bulbs. Join us in our next session at the flowerbed to plant the rest and create a colourful Spring display.

Six GoodGymers - Sekar, Marie-Noelle, Marcus, Luke, Zoe and Sophie teamed up to help out at Canburry Community Garden to help Marylin one last time with some much needed vegetable beds watering, water fetching from the river, pruning of the tall bushes around the fencing area, clearing the fallen leaves from the outbuilding gutter and some weeding and clearing of the path for easy wheel-chair access. As we said goodbye to Marylin who is retiring, we got to know Susan who takes over as Lead Gardener.

Meanwhile over at the GoodGym flowerbed it was a watery work out for Tom, Louise and Saber who filled the large buckets with river water and transported them to the flowerbed by wheel barrow.

The flowers were given an extra good water followed by some super mulching to keep all the moisture in.

In between the watering and mulching Claire removed the litter and a few small weeds. Hopefully the rain will make an appearance soon to give the muscles a rest from watering.

Welcome to Sekar, Sophie and Zoe on their first task with Kingston GoodGym we hope to see you again soon.

Packed sunday today at Canbury Community Garden with Marylin & 4 GoodGymers. We rebuilt the 2 tables in the toddlers area, cleared away the rotten wood, made additional seating with hay bales & cleared away fallen leaves. We cut back over grown branches, thorns & nettles to improve access to the composing area & chopped up the cuttings. We topped planters with compost, harvested the prunes & refilled the barrel with river water

At Canbury Community Gardens...

A warm welcome to Levita and Caro who joined us at Canbury Community Garden for their first mission. Our tasks included stocking up the water containers with river water ahead of what will be another hot weekend, clearing the overgrown garden paths ready to welcome a local group and harvesting 1.6 kg of baby new potatoes.

Whilst some cutting tools are in need of sharpening to ease clipping long grass and nettles, one of the pruning tools turned out to be quite the opposite! To close the mission head gardener Marilyn offered the team a few 2025 garlic heads and baby potatoes, what a treat 🥔🥔

At the GoodGym plot...

Back at the GoodGym flowerbed a team of Dave, Levita, Sabir and Claire got to work.

Levita and Dave did 3 runs to the river for water to feed the plants whilst Claire cleared the rubbish and leaves and tried to revive some heather’s that had caught the sun.

Then Sabir joined to help fill about 7 wheelbarrows with woodchip to keep the flowerbeds well mulched. With the woodchip spread and the plants fed and watered it was time to leave them to grow. 🌱

Welcome to Levita and Caro and congratulations on completing your on first good deed.

Two GoodGymers Marina and Marie-Noëlle spent the morning weeding and tidying the vegetable beds at Canbury Community Garden. Marilyn and John joined in and shared with us some of their travlling adventures across Europe. Resident Robin and the chickens trotted about the garden enjoying fresh wriggly pickings.
We tidied the hops bed, topped up the compost bins with a couple of wheelbarrows of weeds before heading off for lunch with a handful of freshly harvested radishes.