A select group of four Nottingham GoodGymers headed to Carrington for our latest task. Dayna, Matt, Rachel and, new member, Lara spent an hour weeding, tidying and cutting back nettles and thorns in the Community Garden, assisted by honorary GoodGymer, Councillor Nayab Patel. Nayab has been pivotal in getting the project to improve the garden off the ground and, as always, was keen to help out, hear about our latest work and provide us with treats after the task.

The garden is looking so much better than when we first began working on it back in June, although there is still a fenced off area of brambles which Matt was itching to get stuck into. Hopefully we can return at some point to make more inroads into the brambles and, with possible help from the Council, may be able to have that area cleared in the near future.

A big thanks to Nayab for her support, and to Matt for dashing home to get some bags for the cuttings. Also welcome to Lara on her first GoodGym task!

Last night GoodGym Nottingham paid our first visit to the Carlton Hill Sensory Garden (also known as the Garden for the Blind). We had been given instructions by the team at Hope Nottingham, who look after the garden in addition to many other community projects and foodbanks around the city.

Our task was to do some general weeding and tidying of the raised beds and around the garden, so we got stuck in straight away with clearing the weeds and trimming various overgrown and dead plants. Some of the group also did a spot of litter picking around the garden.

As this is a sensory garden, it seemed that all the plants had been selected specifically for their sensory properties, both in terms of the way they looked and, more notably, the way they smelt. As we pruned away, we enjoyed the smells of lavender, curry leaves and many other scents that we couldn’t necessarily name but were very pleasant. We all agreed that it was our nicest smelling task to date!

It was also one of our noisiest tasks. Usually we are tucked away in a quiet corner of Nottingham such as a hidden community garden or a church yard, however the Carlton Hill Sensory Garden is right in the heart of Carlton high street which was bustling on this warm August evening. There were children playing on the neighbouring park and a crowd of people enjoying an after-work drink outside the Wetherspoons opposite.

This actually came in helpful in two ways – firstly, Peter nipped over to the pub to borrow a dustpan and (very small) brush to sweep up the cuttings as we’d forgotten to bring our own, and secondly, a passer by noticed us hard at work in the garden and ‘papped’ us, posting on the local Facebook group in celebration of our efforts before we’d even finished! This was incredibly heart-warming (especially as some of us were referred to as ‘youngsters’), and gained a lot of likes and several encouraging comments.

After an hour of work we downed tools, cleared up and transported several bags of green waste to Peter’s car as he had kindly agreed to dispose of it for us. This was a great task and we hope to return to the Carlton Hill Sensory Garden soon to continue where we left off.

Thanks to this task's volunteers Dayna, Rosemarie, Hannah, Leah, Peter, Rachel, Tom and Vytautas.

A huge well done to Tom who we had not seen since he recently completed the Lakeland Trails ultramarathon in a massive heatwave!!

We were back at Windmill Community Gardens again this week for another session.

The already expansive Gardens have grown again with the adoption of a new, wildly overgrown plot, and our host Lucy gave us a tour to start things off.

There were a few jobs to do in anticipation of their Art in the Garden event this weekend (pop along if you can!) so we quickly split up into a few groups to get as much as we could done in the time we had.

Peter started off clearing some rubbish left over from the shed removal, including a particularly foul-smelling bucket (kudos for your strong stomach, my friend!). Once that was up in the skip, he joined Leah, Nigel and brand-new GoodGymers Khiltee and Dina (Welcome!) in clearing weeds and overgrown foliage from the new children's area. Hazards included ants and other bugs and some particularly prickly bushes with very deep roots.

Rosemarie and Dayna had arguably the toughest task of lugging woodchip from the pile at the entrance right the way down to the bottom of the gardens to cover the pathways that had rotted down or become overgrown. Nigel and Khiltee also grabbed some buckets to cover the floor of the teepee and the old shed foundations.

We ended the session munching on some delicious, freshly-picked fruit!