Productive session at What If? in Stockport this evening for Julie, Laura, Niamh, and Ben!

Braving the stormy weather 🌧 we split into 2 groups:

• Clearing the garden and pond maintenance 🌳
• Planter painting 🎨

Directed by Pauline and Aoife, we managed to put a first coat of green and pink water-based protective paint on the dry bits of the planters, managing not to cause too many splashes. Even with the small brush, Niamh expertly filled in all the nooks and crannies. Julie was in the garden, giving it a clear up after the hot spell of weather.

After Clearing up, we had a brew and some Moroccan chickpea salad 🥗 before heading home.

Another successful session back at What If? where Ben, Niamh and Laura helped to line and plant out new planters gifted to the café.

We filled the planters with herbs, veg, seeds and flowers, whilst learning about combination planting!

We finished off the evening with pasta salad and heard all about the exciting plans What If? have in the pipeline.

Big welcome to Nicole for their first every GoodGym session! Well done for your first outdoor run in a while and great to have you along for the task with What If? in Stockport. Look forward to meeting you again soon.

Following the warm jog from Life Leisure Avondale, we arrived at What If? with a few different tasks required. After introductions and hearing about the things What If? get up to, we donned gloves and grabbed some gardening tools to remove lots of sticky willy otherwise known as Galium aparine from their community garden.

Once we had filled most of their compost bin and watered some courgette seedlings, we turned our attention indoors to help out with the big shed sort-out to catalog and label all the gardening and decorating tools that had accumulated. Ranging from rakes to spades and forks, plus lots of pots and hand tools, we made a decent dent in the big sort-out, so hopefully things are a bit more organised for future use.

Nicole stayed for a bite to eat and chat with the What If? crew while Maimoona and Ben made their way home. We hope to be back again soon!

4 GoodGymers returned to What If? for the first time in 2025 and picked up where we left off last time, adding a second coat of paint to the benches so that they can be put outside so people can enjoy the garden in the nice weather.

We were treated to a delightful bowl of miso butter beans after the task and talked about our upcoming GoodGym sessions.

Thank you for having us back, we look forward to helping out again in the future!

P.s. Thanks to Meera for the pun!

Another great session back at What If?, helping to paint the new benches a lovely pale blue colour to be used outside in their urban garden in the nice weather!

We were kindly invited back to Stockport's newly opened Ideas Café, What If? after we first visited the space a few weeks ago.

Sian, Ben and Laura got to work painting the railings outside a lovely shade of red, sporting ghostbuster costumes! When the rain unexpectedly came, we dashed inside and used our excess wet paint on wooden panels to be used as signs.

Meanwhile, Bee, Hannah and Meera joined three lovely ladies from Grit Studios to help organise their new share shop of craft items - the colour coordination was very pleasing! They then added bright pink labels and the naming of categories led to intense discussion!

Once again, it was an uphill struggle back to the start, with plenty of walking breaks!