Welcome to Ruoyun for their first GoodGym Manchester session! Hope you had a good time and maybe see you again soon.

Today, we helped out with the Shakespearean Garden in Platt Fields Park. A really beautiful community garden with a vegetable/herb garden growing items for a local charity, The Place, a rockery, central seating area, and a stumpery that was popular in Victorian times. With it being open all day long, it takes a lot of tending to, but Kattie and the rest of the volunteers have done a sterling job to revamp the area since 2021. Huge kudos to them!

We helped with several physical tasks, once a lot of litter had been removed from the area. We were tasked with laying woodchip for a path around the perimeter to keep people away from the planted areas and to provide a marked route to explore a lot of the garden not visible from the main footpaths. The pile of woodchip at the start was sizeable and healthy, with apparently inedible mushrooms growing out of the top. Over 90 min, we managed to reduce the pile to a handful and the path had been successfully laid, topping up other sections in the meantime. We certainly got our workout in with shoveling, wheelbarrowing, and raking to ensure everything was laid as required.

We had a brief tour of the garden and shown the set up for the Open Garden on 27th July where we'll definitely be needed to help set up the gazebos and tents. Sign up if you are available!!