One task, double the impact! Tonight 12 GoodGymers carried bin bags of leaves from Christchurch Gardens to Doddington Roof Gardens, proving that one person's trash really is another person's treasure. GoodGym Wandsworth collected the leaves into bags at a previous task, to help keep the church garden, clean, safe and accessible. But rather than see those bags head to landfill, the quick thinking team arranged to carry them a mile down Battersea Park Road and hand deliver them to Chief Gardener Melissa at Doddington Roof Gardens. In their new home, the leaves will be tossed on the compost heap and turned into nutritious mulch to fuel another year of gorgeous garden growth.

We also welcomed Rosie to her first ever GoodGym session and the lovely late summer sun tempted Carol, Andy and Jamie back too! It was great to meet them and to share not one, but two of the local community spaces we have worked with in the past year.

After the task the team took on a 5 minute fitness relay, with two teams going head-to-head in sprints, jumping jacks, plank holds, squats and high knees, to get the heart rate up, test our strength and even have a bit of fun in the meantime. Then it was onto the pub quiz for our monthly social (delayed by one week). Not everyone could stick around this month, but the 6 Salt & Shakers who stayed came a respectable 3rd - no cash prizes for the garden this time, but a good time was had and we all left with a hankering for old-school crisps with names that alliterate (Hula-Hoops, French Fries, Monster Munch...)

It was great to get Goodgym Wandsworth back together once more and see more friendly faces after too long an absence. It was the first time many of us had visited Christchurch Gardens outside of winter and we certainly couldn't miss the big pile of wood waiting for us with what appeared to be last year's pine Christmas tree thrown into the mix! There were a variety of tactics at play with some magnificent sawing technique attacking the bigger logs and brute force appearing to win over tools for many on the smaller bits. With some satisfying cracks of branches, we certainly ticked off the Gym element! There was a healthy amount of competition trying to beat the number of bags achieved in previous missions and we walked away very satisfied leaving behind a much smaller pile. To be continued I'm sure...

A very warm Wandsworth welcome to Chris on his first mission too!

Today 3 goodgymers came to Battersea to help out at Christchurch Gardens.

We met with Nigel who gave us our instructions and gardening tools needed. We were to help cut up and bag a big pile of twigs and branches as well as start on the weeding to get ready for them to build a wild garden.

We got to work right away and within 2 hours we had cleared all the twigs and branches and made a dent on the weeding. We bagged everything up in to 7 bags and took them round to the bins ready to be collected.

We also had to rescue loads of snails

Great job everyone and a huge welcome to Stephanie who joined us for her first good deed

We turned up expecting a few logs to move and some weeding and what we got was a mammoth task! Under all the logs and thistles was actually a LOT of branches that needed cutting down and bagging up. We managed about 2/3 of it before having to admit defeat as we were only one mountain down, and the other still needing another hour of time. Still, it did render some of us 'stick converts', going from not understanding the child/dog obsession with them to hugging bags of them in place of people!