With light evenings comes the return of tasks in Oxford's green spaces, and one of our favourites is Aston's Eyot. Tucked between the Iffley Road and the river, the Eyot was a rubbish dump in the 19th Century, but it's now a thriving nature reserve managed by the Friends of Aston's Eyot.

Wednesday's task was nettle removal. Scything and pulling the nettles allows light to get through for wild flowers, and removing them reduces the richness of the soil, which wild flowers prefer. This should all help increase the biodiversity of the area. Scything is always a fan favourite at GoodGym, so there were plenty of volunteers for that task. Henry very competently assembled the new scythe, and Axelle did great work pruning back an elder tree which was getting a little thuggish. Some of the GoodGymers were lucky enough to spot 2 muntjac deer on the way home - it's always surprising and delightful how much nature can thrive yards from busy city streets.

Great work team!

Welcome to GoodGym Emma and Ines.

GoodGym have a lovely partnership with Boundary Brook Nature Park which goes back a few years. We've done a whole variety of tasks around the site, from reprofiling the pond, to building yards and yards of gravel path, litter picking and digging out bramble roots, to possibly our creepiest task to date - clearing the rubbish out of the abandoned sheds on the edge of the allotments.

Our January 2024 session at BB saw us getting stuck in (the mud) digging out bramble roots to try and stop them spreading further into the meadow area. Lazy dogs, forks, spades and plenty of brute force were the order of the day as we competed to dig out the biggest bramble root (some disagreement on whether length or girth were more important!). Working away, discarding layers as the sun broke through the clouds, getting thoroughly covered in mud, we ended up chatting away about all kinds of assorted topics including giant edible dormice, the current tally of GoodGym babies, the goats at Oxford City Farm, and how much Charlie has in common with a Disney princess with his knack of attracting wildlife to him (a frog, robin, cockchafer beetle grubs).

We always enjoy a couple of hours at Boundary Brook, so we'll look forward to some more path-building in the spring!

Welcome to GoodGym Susanna :-)

Tiny Forest brings the benefits of woodland right into the heart of our cities and urban spaces: connecting people with nature, helping to mitigate the impacts of climate change, as well as providing nature-rich habitat to support urban wildlife.

Earthwatch is pioneering Tiny Forest in the UK and is conducting a UK-wide research study to help us understand how these super tiny woods have the potential to be super powerful.

Last night Earthwatch Europe launched their Lottery funded partnership with GoodGym at the Littlemore Tiny Forest.

A couple of years ago 600 saplings were planted in a patch of ground 200 metres square (roughly the size of a tennis court), and the plot is now a lovely baby woodland at the end of a wild flower patch.

Earthwatch are collecting data on biodiversity, carbon storage, flood mitigation and thermal comfort in the Tiny Forest in order to see how the scheme could help in urban areas. 100 of the 600 trees in the Littlemore Tiny Forest have been tagged to be regularly monitored, and these were the main focus of our citizen science.

Dividing into trios we made our way around the site checking that the trees were correctly identified in the database, measuring height and girth, and counting the number of stems for multi-stem trees. It turned out to be a very satisfying task - particularly tracking down the last few elusive tagged trees! We managed to find and monitor 58 trees in under an hour.

Other experiments made observations on water soak away and thermal comfort. Tracking the changes over the next few years will be very interesting.

Welcome to GoodGym Mark and Jac. Great to have a visitor from the central team Theresa.