The recently established Pear Tree Park was named by children from a local school, drawing inspiration from Perivale, where the green space is located. Perivale, in turn, can be loosely interpreted as “a valley of pear trees”. Wouldn’t it be appropriate then to have some eponymous fruit trees in Pear Tree Park - let’s say, fifty of them?

On a Sunday morning, five GoodGymers met in a café in Pitshanger for a 2km run or walk to the place that had once been a golf course, now transforming into a vibrant, green space for everyone. Steph Ducat, Zuzanna, and Kash ran through Pitshanger Park, past St Mary’s Church, while Devi and Sevan walked a different route, with the Brent Viaduct and Sixty Trees Lane as the main landmarks. Harvey ran directly to the task and met the rest of the team at the Pear Tree Bistro.

In the afternoon, Pear Tree Park was going to host a family-friendly pear tree planting volunteering session, and the organisers grew in confidence, seeing six pairs of GoodGym hands, keen to help with digging ahead of the event. Richard from Ealing Greenwayers and Diana, the bistro owner, brought spades and wheelbarrows, and marked on the grass where the holes were expected to appear.

Digging techniques and hole shapes varied from person to person. From Harvey’s perfect squares, through Steph's pizza slices, to Sevan’s and Kash’s whole round-style pizzas. Topsoil with the grass was systematically wheelbarrowed away, in case it contained traces of weed killer, thanks to its golf course past. The deeper the spades went, the more rocks they encountered, and digging became tougher.

Devi, who chose Pear Tree Park as her first GoodGym session, faced the demanding task head-on, excavating and wheelbarrowing soil like a pro, and even choosing more digging over a coffee break. What a determination! That said, we can safely report that Devi had been socialising and caffeinating with us earlier on, and is great to have around for a chat. Welcome Devi!

In 90 minutes, we got just a bit less than half of the required holes dug, which proved to be a great advantage as a starting point for the afternoon event!

A mild January sunday afternoon saw a large group of volunteers meet by the Pear Tree Park cafe for some tree planting. The trees were, you guessed it, different varieties of pear trees.

A lot of work had already been done in an earlier session, but that still left digging, pile driving fence posts into the ground, spreading compost and mulch and finally applying a protective cover. There were a couple of unfortunate mishaps, including someone who planted 6 trees in one hole and a bucket that didnt survive the attentions of an excited dog. But overall it was a very successful and satisfying bit of community action - one that will hopefully bear plenty of fruit for years to come.

Throughout Sunday, Sevan and Kash pressed on North, jogging from one community mission to another. First, Walmer gardens, Walpole Park second. What was next? Walthamstow? Not quite. Two adventurers stopped at Pear Tree Park, answering task owner Richard’s call to action. The rockery near the park’s future bistro had been overtaken by thistles, grass, and dandelions again! Moreover, the tenant of the park’s cafe, Diana, had donated bulbs to improve the car park and cafe surroundings in the spring, and those needed to be planted sooner rather than later.

The last-minute Pear Tree Park activity surprisingly brought not only two GoodGymers, but also five Ealing Greenwayers (a.k.a. Friends of Richard), which surprised the task owner himself! Most of the group started digging out weeds with forks at the base of the rockery and advanced towards the top to meet other explorers in the middle, Stanley & Livingstone-style. One of the Greenwayers was assigned a very important job of opening bags containing a few hundred bulbs in total, without a knife or scissors.

The task wasn’t without skeptics, who didn’t believe we’d manage to do any planting on the day, stuck with the weeding job. Thanks to the fantastic teamwork, we’ve planted clusters of mixed flower bulbs in the soil between the rocks, and even avoided digging out each other’s bulbs, which could have happened surprisingly easily with a little bit less coordination.

After several sessions at the Pear Tree Park rockery throughout last year, we cannot wait till springtime to finally see the flurry of colours emerging from the inconspicuous mound of rocks and soil.

The second day of Ealing Climate Week felt more like being on the set of an action film rather than taking a climate action. Fire? Check. Helicopters? Check. A small team of heroes? Check.

After a two-month break from joint sessions with Ealing Greenwayers, three GoodGymers arrived at Pear Tree Park to find charred stumps of a hedge that used to be a border between the newest park in Ealing and Perivale Park sports ground. The fire that broke out in July consumed all green parts of the hedge and the woodchip carpet our team had spread months before. Today's session with Richard and five other Greenwayers was to tidy up the debris and create space for the vegetation to be reborn like a Phoenix.

As the Greenwayers attacked the burnt stems and branches with saws, Sevan, Steph, and Kash were dragging and wheelbarrowing the charred timber to drop it behind the bushes. The team discovered that not all blackened wood was dead inside, so Richard decided not to cut down all the tree stems, hoping that they might revive.

While a decent action film doesn't necessarily need a twist, our story had one: twisting a not-burnt, but rotten tree, a part of a hedge close to the closed park cafe. Three GoodGymers diverted their attention from barrows to the leaning dead tree and yanked it off the ground. It took all three from the GoodGym gang to haul it away, so afterwards they came back to the wheelbarrows overflowing with burnt branches that needed emptying.

The peaceful atmosphere in the park was briefly disturbed by the sight of three tandem rotor helicopters sliding through the blue sky. Where did they go? No one could tell. But everyone knew who had the most sooty nose after the task, and this time it wasn't Kash.

Five GoodGymers met four Ealing Greenwayers near the Perivale Park Athletics Track for their last summer event this season. It was not a race or a competition. Two teams worked together against the ivy that had swallowed the fence between the track and the car park in Pear Tree Park. To make the job safe, the Greenwayers marked four parking spaces as out of order with a stretch of barricade tape and a few cones. That setup, together with Richard's Walpole Park Volunteer hi-viz, must have made us look like a legitimate force to be reckoned with.

A thick coating of ivy was covering everything: the fence, the soil, and even more layers of ivy - can you imagine that? We didn't even know where to start, but with a team of nine, we could begin in several places at once! Shears, loppers, forks, spades and saws were in action. Thanks to the team's relentless effort and Richard's mastery of ad-hoc tool-sourcing, an incredible amount of ivy was removed and wheelbarrowed into a hidden ivy graveyard behind a hedge.

"A totally superb Goodgym onslaught today, thanks so much. It will now be possible for Greener Ealing staff to tidy up and lay woodchip. We've made their job so much easier." - Richard.

We are taking a strategic break from the sessions with the Greenwayers for the remaining two summer months - but worry not! We may do an odd session to support Pear Tree Park by the River Brent - as we did later today, bashing the Himalayan balsam. We are also looking forward to reuniting with the Greenwayers in September, during Ealing Climate Week - sign up for the occasion now!

Four explorers Kash, Sevan, Harvey and Steph Ducat set off and jogged after a coffee break to meet Professor Richard from Ealing Greenwayers in Greenford near the Jungle of Gurnell. Explorer Andrew was already there and we also had another French explorer Maxime who decided to adventure outside of his borough. The explorers braved the jungle of Gurnell in search of the fabled land Professor Richard mentioned at the beginning of the meeting: Eldorado aka the Balsam Field. The field was a treasure for the explorers, but it could not be seen from the trail path. Was this just a myth or would the intrepid explorers find their way to the holy Balsam Field? Armed with loppers, shears and slashers the adventurers battled their way through the impenetrable jungle to find their first treasure...a lime bike!! The jungle opened up to an open space with rocks, flowing water of the river and the famous Balsam Field that Professor Richard notoriously spoke about to the GG explorers. While part of the explorers kept clearing the highway to Eldorado, the others started removing the Balsam from the field. Another successful expedition for Professor Richard and his explorers - welcome to Eldorado!! Impact was gi-ga-normous : words from Richard