The team may not have known it, but this evening’s session at the Get Out Gardens was a milestone in our relationship with this brilliant charity.

Get Out’s main aim is to use environmental education to connect young people in Tower Hamlets with nature, developing self-confidence and life skills through several strands of activities. One of these activities is surfing, which sounds like a great idea – we are yet to get involved in this particular strand, but we are very much involved with their flagship project, a permaculture garden in Bow, next to Malmesbury Primary School. The site occupies about a third of an acre, and 2 years ago was disused and completely overgrown. It’s now a productive food forest and acts as a hub for education and connecting to the natural environment. GoodGym Newham first started helping out about 18 months ago, dropping in for the garden’s regular Saturday sessions where Get Out’s founder and fountain of permaculture knowledge, Kieran, would be on hand to direct and answer questions. However, the long term vision involves getting volunteers to develop their own knowledge so they can take a bit more ownership of the garden (as well as using that knowledge for their own gardening projects), and in doing so, this means that progress is less dependent on Kieran’s time, efforts are more widely shared, the garden is more sustainable and more people will benefit.

So back to our session… Having pitched in for a while now and some of us have even attended a permaculture training course, Kieran had sent in advance a set of instructions to interpret (including how to get in) and we were let loose in the garden to follow those through by ourselves. Although a seemingly straightforward task of weeding an area in preparation for more vegetable growing (which we made a great start on) it still enabled us to demonstrate our understanding of the composting system (which we largely got right - it’s all about the carbon to nitrogen ratio…) Anyway, great stuff everyone, we hope this can carry on as a regular group run task, once again showing the effectiveness of a large number of enthusiastic hands in a short space of time.