‘If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden’ - Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

8 Goodgymers spent their evening at one of their more regular haunts dubbed on the website as ‘a Secret Garden’ (in Widcombe). No, it’s not THE Secret Garden, you won’t find Mary Lennox playing there. Rather, it’s an old Baptist Burial Ground looked after by The Bath Preservation Trust, cheery! (It is actually quite lovely).

As a few GoodGymers ran their way to the Garden/Burial Ground, discussions were had around what our tasks today would be, as we had a larger group than normal. Would we or wouldn’t we be removing bind weed and brambles? How do we feel about pulling up bind weed and brambles? Suffice to say, and you won’t be surprised, we did pull up an abundance of bind weed and chopped down many a bramble. Some of us felt sad for said plants, I suppose they’d gone to all that effort to choke the life out of the other plants, and bind weed flowers look pretty. The brambles were even showing off their bounty of blackberries. We mused about uses for bind weed: could we fashion a rope? Did it have medicinal properties? Interestingly the leaves do contain a molecule that can treat hypertension and is also known to be a diuretic, among other things… so not all bad! (Thank you Wikipedia) The flowers are also important for sweat bees! (I’ll let you research those and no it’s not a typo).

But I digress… all GoodGymers assembled we took to the task assigned, with gusto, and as usual we cleared a sizeable space of bind weed and brambles within our allotted hour. Making light work of it if I do say so myself. Richard, Jerr and Ruth even managed to remove a blanket of the stuff; allowing flora and fauna underneath to be free and to grow and prosper, until the bind weed and brambles take hold again, and we will be back in a year clearing the same area! We will be ready!

Another good evening’s work team! Till next month at the not so secret, secret garden.