Love it or loath it (the bridge, not the location!), no-one can deny that every session at the community allotment at Hogacre Common gives us a good stair workout! Hogacre is tucked in between railway line and flood plain. The access is across a pedestrian bridge with many steps, making deliveries to the garden challenging.

Items we have been asked to carry across the bridge in the past include sofas and horse manure, so tonight's task of shovelling woodchip into boxes to carry across was pretty easy by comparison. We used the first loads to spread woodchip around the boggy entrance to the site, then refilled the boxes and delivered them to the garden gate for use around the beds and pathways.

Meanwhile, Django the spaniel kept a watchful eye on the GoodGymers weeding and mulching the garden beds; everyone's favourite supervisor!

Welcome back Axelle!

Over the last 2 years the Warneford Hospital has been building an eight-bed psychiatric intensive care unit (PICU) to enable young people experiencing the most acute phase of a serious mental disorder to receive specialist help closer to home. The new Meadow Unit opened late last year, adjoining the Highfield Unit where we've been involved previously.

The gardens at the Meadow Unit have been designed and planted but over the summer months have become swamped with weeds. De-weeding is the perfect job for a GoodGym flash mob - many hands make light work! Starting in the furthest section of gardens we gradually worked our way back to the external gates, freeing geraniums, hydrangeas and pretty grasses from encroaching weeds. Lots of careful checking of "weed or deliberate?!" ensued as we did our level best not to pull up anything that should be there (including the intentional thistles). We cleared numerous trugs and wheelbarrows full of weeds, tried our best to keep our chat quiet by the ward windows (not easy with many back for their first task post summer holidays and lots to catch up on!), and learnt plenty about about plant identification.

We very much hope the garden thrives as it gets more established and is a joyful feature for service users and staff.

Welcome to GoodGym Charlie!

On Wednesday night we worked some GoodGym magic on the car park of Ovada - a not-for profit art gallery in central Oxford. Paid parking is an important income stream for them, but the area needed clearing of weeds, bushes pruned, and fallen leaves sweeping up to keep it a usable space.

GoodGymers got the whole area spic and span in record time, which left time to check out the latest exhibition afterwards - a lovely treat for all of us!

Welcome to GoodGym Kris!

We had a triptych of tasks last night at the Marston Community Allotment:

• With warm, dry weather forecast for the next few days eveything needed a good soaking.
  
• One of the raised beds needed clearing of an assortment of weeds, including the dreaded bindweed.
  
• Woodchip and compost needed shovelling and barrowing over from the site entrance.
  

The weeders unearthed parnsips amongst the weeds, the waterers to-d and fro-d around raised beds and polytunnel making sure everything was well hydrated, the woodchip was used to level out the pathway, and compost to earth up potatoes (after they'd been freed from their bindweed and bramble companions). With parakeets in the trees and some warm late-summer sunshine it was almost Costa del Oxford.

Honourable mention for Mark's cameo towards the end of the task - just in time time for plenty of selfies and eating all the fresh veg he could lay his hands on ;-)