In August we spent a day clearing weeds instead of product backlogs. Taking advantage of Red Badger’s volunteering policy, our team carried out some park maintenance in Myatt’s Fields Park in Camberwell, South London.
As Badgers, we’re given the opportunity to take up one paid day off a year to give something back to the local community or engage in meaningful work. From food banks to animal shelters, this fantastic initiative is also a great team-building experience.
Tony Danford, the horticultural manager, welcomed us with cool water, gardening clothes, many tools and a few safety tips.
Swapping our keyboards for rakes, our main mission was to prepare the ground for planting by pulling out acres of weeds. Well, I’m not sure it was actually acres but it certainly seemed like a lot.
Tony seemed happy enough, saying that we were definitely at least as good as a group from The Independent a week earlier (I bet he says that to all the companies!).
We had a quick break after a couple of hours to help support the park cafe, and came back laden with ice cream, drinks and pastries, which all got polished off in double quick time (so that we could get back to the volunteering as quickly as possible).
At one point we found a huge iron stake embedded in the ground, that Tony thought was a leftover anchor of a circus tent from ages past.
We all took turns trying to pull it out, King Arthur / Excalibur style, and obviously, it was Rane who finally managed it, so is henceforth king born of all England. We now need to find a lake to throw it in!
Lastly, we chopped up most of a pruned tree and carted it off to the compost heap, before heading off to a nearby cafe (run by a Bake Off finalist) where we ate tasty food and complained about all of our aches and pains.
Many thanks to Susie for organising, hopefully, we will do something similar again next year.
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