On a blisteringly hot (well compared to what we've been used to) day, 14 of us turned up to help Mary from Green Synergy with their community garden. This is a wonderful project on some waste ground behind the hospital that was partly a quarry but become overgrown with brambles and nettles and had been used to fly tip rubbish. A great deal of work has already been done since they took over the site last year but they are still a long way from completing their proposed plan.

We contributed with different tasks, weeding around borders and the seating area and scything at the top end of the site in preparation for a wildflower meadow. Sophie, Nick, Howard, Nicola and later Sally took on the latter, cutting down a large area of nettles (leaving a border for wildlife). Digging out the roots was a task too big: Mary has access to a rotavator and agreed it made much more sense to use that to go over the area. It was good to get some practice with the scythes (donated to the Group by the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust).

During...

After

​The other task was to dig over some areas ready to plant; after a prong on someone's fork snapped on impact with a rock, Jonathan and I switched to using a pick axe to dig out the rocks and stone first, which worked well. Karl finished off the area to a standard my Grandad would have approved of. Finally we got lots of perennial flower seeds sown in one segment of the garden. ​

We had a lovely day in the sun, made even better with the cakes and doughnuts that Mary provided and the flapjacks I made.  I'm sure we will go back another time to help out some more.
Jeff