Picking up sticks

One of the philosophical stickers I give out to 4 year olds (less creepy than it sounds, honest) is “What’s slower than a snail?” Not Team Goodgym Greenwich!

On Wednesday, we made the short trip to Woolwich Works, via a run along the river, to help clear up their community garden. It’s a really exciting new project and made even more special that the project is being run by fellow Goodgymer Zeb. Situated literally in the backyard of one of the most historic buildings Woolwich, it’s sure to be a hit with the local community and a really valuable place to relax, reflect and unwind.

We divided up tasks - from picking up litter, to strimming and trimming, to weeding. Lots of fun was had with the power tools and special shoutouts to Brin and Marta for taking on the challenge.

Largely untouched for who knows how long, but the garden was we found it was a hive of activity - grasshoppers galore, and the recent wet weather had brought the snails out. Which in turn brought out the snail-expert Franki - there are apparently 60,000 snails in the average garden (average probably taken from somewhere like Tunbridge Wells), and the one with shells that go leftward (anticlockwise) are 1 in 100,000, so have particular trouble finding a mate. Maybe they just need to come out of their shell. Or shell out on some decent garms. Cue me checking every snail I picked up before throwing into the newly coined Snail Sanctuary bushes.

We decided to limit our tidying to parts of the garden, leaving other parts of the garden wild. And we hope Woolwich Works agrees to continue to give the wildlife and insects a place they can still call home - which will in turn attract more birds and general diversity. Which will only make it a more attractive place to visit as a human!

This did make us think about future missions and the impact on ecology of traditional gardening, and how we’d like to balance “gardening” with projects that re-wild, or maintain-wild. And big thumbs up to Matt for coming across a Guardian Science Weekly podcast about wild vs artificial gardens: https://www.theguardian.com/science/audio/2023/aug/08/summer-picks-should-we-ban-artificial-grass-podcast which is very thought provoking.

Huge thanks to Zeb for the chance to stand on stage at Woolwich Works, and telling us about the various events there - such as the free tours at 11am on Sunday mornings!