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!!

Nine GoodGymers returned to the Meadows Foodbank last night for our latest task. We've spent many evenings helping inside the foodbank, sorting donations, cleaning, stacking food and moving snooker tables, but on this occasion we had the pleasure of helping in the garden out the back of the Bridgeway Hall Methodist centre where the foodbank is housed.

We were met by Dave on arrival who gave us our instructions and some refreshments, then we set to work out in the last of the day's sunshine. The winter months had resulted in the garden becoming pretty overgrown with weeds, so our main job was to pull these up to clear the pathway and raised beds. We also chopped back some of the thorny bushes and collected some compost from the far side of the garden to be put into the weed-free beds. The beds will soon be planted with seeds and potatoes. There are also plans for the centre to install some secure bike parking in the back yard, so we may have a future task assisting with clearing this space.

We welcomed Adrian to his first GoodGym session, and Liz who has moved to Nottingham from Bristol where she used to do GoodGym. We're also delighted to see some of our previous GoodGym Nottingham folk return after a bit of a break, and of course we're always pleased to see the regular faces too!!

You can tell that the clocks have changed when the head torches stay in the bag and six Goodgymers from Nottingham can venture outside without hats, coats and gloves!

Rachel, Peter, Tom, Leah, Nigel and Hannah made the trip to St Stephen's churchyard to help with a spring clean and "log" another good deed!

Winter had taken its toll and our job was to gather up the fallen branches and pile them up in one corner so Johannes, the caretaker, could have a clear run with the mower.

In true Goodgym style we got stuck in and carried, dragged and cut down to size a great number of branches and left behind a very happy caretaker. A "treemendous" effort indeed!