The Canal Club Community Garden at Belmont Wharf is a wild-flower space overlooking the canal. It’s used for food growing, and as a wildlife habitat. Produce and plants are shared with the local community and it’s a place of calm for all to visit.

Unfortunately, weeds have thrived in the paved area at the front of the space, and GoodGym were required to put this to rights. Louise worked with a hoe, Jo with a spade and John tugged out roots with his gloved hands.

After a hard-working hour and a bit, including a sweep of the plant debris, the area looked much much tidier. The GoodGymers headed off for a well-deserved café break, and stayed there for three hours!

The Canal Club Community Garden in Bethnal Green is a food and wild flower growing community garden built by boat dwellers and the local community. A tidy space reduces the potential for anti-social behaviour - which is where GoodGym come in.

An hour's community grafting on a Sunday afternoon proved a popular attraction, with a waiting list for sign-ups. Being tucked away, between a council estate and the canal, the garden is quite hard to find, so we weren't going to "hit the roof" when one participant turned up slightly late. Indeed, the "before and after" pictures (8 and 13) show just how much gardening and litter-picking six people can manage in sixty minutes. Even though those pictures make it look as if Leo did it all by himself.

There was a bonus: the garden offers free pizza to children every Sunday afternoon; the kids get the chance to make their own. The invitation was extended to GoodGym, so we've now added "chef" to our catalogue of skills. And the threatened rain never arrived.

A special welcome to Lucy, all the way from Hammersmith & Fulham, who joined us for her 399th Good Deed after a GoodGym photo-shoot in Mile End Park, having also passionately taken part in our "North of the river" team for Saturday's rounders contest.

The Canal Club Community Garden is a small wildlife community garden, built for food growing and wild flowers and wildlife habitat, on the site of an old timber yard.

The weeds there weren't just poking up between the paving stones, they'd taken over the area. That is until Amber, Beth and John turned up, with sharp spades and an hour's hard graft. By the time they'd finished, the area was virtually clear of unwanted greenery.

This evening we visited the Canal Club Community Garden by Victoria Park and what a hidden gem it is! We were met by Sally and Dominic who put us straight to work weeding a huge paved section outside the main garden. At first glance it was an intimidating area to clear (lots of large weeds which nearly sent us toppling over!), but in full GoodGym fashion we got stuck in. Well done to Isa for taking on a challenging plant on the playground fence! A few passers by commented on our excellent work and while we were clearing Dominic found a surprise pearl in the undergrowth!

By the end of this mission we were thrilled with our work - the area had been transformed in just an hour! We had enough time for Sally to show us the beautiful gardens. On the canal front this was such a treat - full of plants to attract wildlife, a pizza oven, a little 'igloo' and strings of fairy lights. It really is magical. This tidy up was in preparation for their Celebrating Creative Communities event on Saturday which looks wonderful! There will also be live music until 10pm, so do pop along and show your support!

Thank you to TaskForce member Tracey and Area Activator Laura for taking fab photos. Welcome back to Jennifer on her second mission - we hope to see you again soon! And thank you to Becky, Si and Jo for a soggy run home through Victoria Park!

Next up Isabelle is leading a mission on Saturday to St Paul's Church in Shadwell to meet the Tabard Growers and shovel soil - sounds like a great arm work out!

Two tasks, two dedicated teams

A total of 22 runners gathered together for two tasks tonight!

We warmed up on the hotel steps, glad to be heading out to two outdoor tasks even though it was a slightly damp Monday evening.

Task Force member Kat, was leading a team of 8 to our new task, some tough weeding at the Canal Club Community Garden, off Bishops Way. This was a heavy duty task, overseen by task owner Dominic, that saw the runners work tirelessly on the concreted area outside Scallywags nursery uprooting some long forgotten, well established weeds, really sandwiched between the paving stones. A tough gig, requiring the use of spades, shovels and trowels.

In the meantime, I took the rest of the crew down to Rocky Gardens on the Hollybush Estate where Michael and Margaret, and Basil the dog, were meeting us for a big tidy of the vegetable beds, along with some re-panelling of the greenhouse!

As usual, the time flew by: shelves were sawn, panels replaced, weeds uprooted, corn picked…it was the usual hive of activity. And then it was after 8, and we were taking our final pics before heading over to Middleton Green’s basketball court to be reunited with the rest of our crew, before getting stuck into tonight’s fitness.

I divided us into two teams before handing us over to Bryon, to devise a fitness game. Competing against one another, each runner sprinted two laps of the court, and it wasn’t until the end of the game that I realised one team was a runner short. You. Had. One. Job.

And then we made our way to the grass clearing for the upper body part of our session. More, tweaked scorpion push-ups were ploughed through; side planks were endured and then we finished our session with standing crunches and MMA’s infamous sprawl exercise. Well, if you’re going to give up your Monday night, you may as well make it count right?

Monday shout-out’s to the best team in town

• A massive welcome to Fenja who did brilliantly on her first GoodGym run, throwing herself into the task and running like a superstar. *
• …and a big hello and welcome to Wandsworth runner Bruno, who joined us for the first time tonight.

Big, big GG thankyou’s tonight to:

• Kat, who led half the team to a brand new task, and led the task brilliantly AND who organised a wonderful #SuperSaturday event with Mile End parkrun.

• Bryon, for devising and leading our running game in Middleton Green

• To Liz, Becky and Kat for brilliant backmarking.

Moving on...

Next week we're at a new task, at the Brady Centre, so come on - join in the fun next week why don't you!