On a hot Saturday morning, Mike took two other Friends of Grove Farm: Portia and new joiner Aaron, and five GoodGymers: Josh, Maxime, Sevan, Steph and Kash, for an adventure in the ancient woodlands of Grove Farm. The daredevils cut through the thicket to make space for the tool trolley to pass through. Would all the paths be as overgrown? Last month Friends of Grove Farm cleared a wild footpath and were hoping to continue the efforts with a bigger, GoodGym-infused group.

It was quite a shock to see two employees of Greener Ealing (Ealing Council's contractors) pressing through the paths with powerful petrol-fueled machinery, leaving open, wide paths in a matter of minutes. What would take us the whole Saturday session for those two was a piece of cake! Slightly discombobulated (as we have never seen GEL working in the same areas as volunteers in Grove Farm), we waited for Mike to make contact with the unexpected competition. The guys from GEL didn't seem to know anything about the planned volunteers' activity at the paths and didn't need help ravaging the overgrowth.

When asked for plan B, Mike took us to a hedge we had tackled last time in September 2024. The plan was to open the sightlines behind the hedge and prevent nefarious behaviours as Mike put it. While others happily clung to their chosen shears and loppers, Maxime volunteered to pick up the litter. Kash disappeared in the front, clearing the way with a hedge trimmer until she encountered a litter hotspot, which Josh immediately helped tidy up. Steph Sevan, Portia and Aaron razed the shrubs next to the hedge and built a dead hedge out of the trimmings.

When Mike mentioned an abandoned bike hiding in the nearby meadow, Josh, Sevan and Kash sensing an adventure, rushed to scout the field. To their surprise, the vehicle wasn't yet another dumped lime bike, but a crashed delivery moped! After noting the number plates, the trio took it towards the road for the council to collect.

Missed this month's adventure? Sign up for the next conservation day at Grove Farm in July here!

Michelle and two members of The Friends of Grove Farm walked around the nature reserve armed with bags and pickers for litter-picking. Walking along the paths in the reserve, we were surprised to see just a few bits of rubbish. After collecting what we could, we walked out to the road and found much more interesting items littered. I found three packets of unopened pierogi and a strawberry milkshake- would have been great for a picnic in the reserve! We stopped for a water break, and took a few photos next to our litter haul. The Friends of Grove Farm members continued for a bit longer and Michelle headed off to enjoy the spring sunshine.

Four GoodGymers and Friends of Grove Farm, Anna and Mike, started the day by venturing into the wilderness of the woodlands near Sudbury Hill. Surprisingly, they encountered a familiar face in the woods!

Dr. Livingstone, I presume?

It was not exactly Dr. Livingstone, but Sue, another volunteer helping various causes in the area. Sue and Anna launched an expedition to eradicate litter in a different part of Grove Farm park, while others stayed to shed some light on the reason why visitors were avoiding the green space.

Mike explained that residents reported feeling unsafe entering Grove Farm because the sides of the path were overgrown. Who knew what dangers could be lurking behind the bushes? A leopard? A drunk? A mugger? Today's job was to open the sides of the path so that park visitors could see there was nothing there - or to make sure no predators could hide in the shrubs anymore.

Penny was cutting overhanging branches obscuring the view, Steph Ducat was lopping the thicker branches on the ground that Kash could not raze with a hedge trimmer, and Sevan was collecting all the cuttings and constructing a dead hedge. Mike was doing a little bit of everything, and, of course, directing the operation.

The 90-minute session was productive and filled with chats about safaris, the Maasai jumping dance, and baby-friendly socials at Grove Farm. We are excited to see what the future holds!

It was not brambles, ivy or litter that were the main nuisance at Grove Farm today. Friends of Grove Farm had another problem to fix: a leaking pond! A pool of water at the bottom of the park's hill was surrounded by clay borders and one of the walls was reinforced with a fallen willow. Unfortunately, the dead tree fortified by clay was not doing its job to keep the water in. We don't know if the Paradise Fields beaver engineers were consulted about building a dam, but the GoodGym Ealing plumbing team got there first!

Three Friends of Grove Farm: Anna, Mike and Olena were joined on Saturday by a strong team of six GoodGymers. The job was to excavate some clay, and then fill the gaps that were causing the leak. We had an archaeologist and an engineer (a network engineer to be specific) on the team, which boosted our confidence about digging and constructing things. One team: Sevan, Simon, Mehmet and Mike were sent to mine for clay at the other part of the park, while the rest stayed at the pond. Gaby and Kash were digging the clay locally, eroding the top of existing walls that did not have to be as high, and Eliz, Anna and Olena did most of the construction work, patching the leaky pond barrier.

To make sure that the clay is properly compacted, our builders were performing a flagship GoodGym exercise - muddy mountain climbers (see how Eliz did it!). That routine was not only a perfect workout for the legs and core but also for nature. Which other gym has that on their offer?

The last ten minutes of the task was spent on cleaning the tools, followed by a short excursion to the wood anemone location. Cutting back all the brambles in that area in the winter paid off - we were dazzled by a wonderful carpet of white flowers against the greenery of the woodlands!

Wood anemones will be still flowering in the next two weeks, so if you are keen to see their beauty, join Friends of Grove Farm for creating habitats for slow worms next week or the conservation day in April.

Steph, Sevan and Kash felt that spring is on its way as they ran past first daffodils showing up on Ealing's Green spaces. The sky didn't clear yet, but the nighttime rain has stopped, leaving plenty of puddles to jump over. The soggy paths of Grove Farm felt like a proper cross-country course, with the slip hazards and the artistic mud splatters they painted on GoodGymers' knee-high socks.

Friends of Grove Farm led our trio through a meadow to the local equivalent of a bamboo forest: a dogwood grove. That grove was the subject of today's task: making the dogwood history! After the winter months focused on cutting down brambles to help wood anemones thrive in the spring, this Saturday our team was about to cut the dogwood trees down.

While Mike and Livio set off to clear the brambles off manholes, the GoodGymers and Portia employed loppers to cut down dogwood. Anna was slowly carrying the chopped-down trees away to build sort of a dead hedge on the top of a steep ravine surrounding the brook. Some of the dogwood plants, although thin, were several metres high, so it did seem appropriate to shout "timber!" occasionally.

With all the enthusiasm surrounding the chopping activity, we thought we should have asked for the context.

"Why are we actually removing the dogwood?"
*"Dogwood grows very vigorously and it just takes over. We left this one for quite a long and now it has grown very tall" - Anna.

The objective was to prevent dogwood from spreading. We were also creating an opening near the existing meadow.

We removed an impressive number of dogwood trees, even though after stepping back, the result, seen from the distance, did not fully reflect what we had achieved. We are determined to come back and finish off the rest of the trees. That job will have to wait until later in the year as the bird nesting season is approaching and we cannot risk destroying the habitat in such a critical time.

Friends of Grove Farm assured us there are plenty of other jobs to do, sign up for next month's session now!

The January conservation day at Grove Farm started with blue skies and bird song above the volunteers' heads - a setting that felt like a perfect day to start an adventure with GoodGym!

Maria took advantage of such a beautiful morning to come to her first session at Greenford's nature reserve for an environment-friendly workout with GoodGymers Sevan, Kash and Liuba.

Mike, who was leading one of the Grove Farm teams today, took the GoodGym four to the lower part of the area where wood anemones bloom in the Spring. The white flowers come out only if the space is cleared of brambles that otherwise block the sunlight for other plants. You might have guessed by now what our task was: a bramble bash! Mike gave us instructions and listed the safety risks (including slippery ground and Kash swinging her hedge trimmer), then left for a short time to fetch two new Grove Farm volunteers.

Liuba and Maria were meticulously cutting the brambles with loppers while Kash harnessed the power of Mike's power tool to clear big expanses of invasive plants. Sevan was the only person with the rake and it was his job to move all the trimmings away from the path and build a dead hedge. In case you are curious, a dead hedge is a fence-like construction made of cut logs, branches, sticks, stems, etc. that slowly decomposes and makes a fantastic habitat for insects and small mammals - it becomes a hub for biodiversity!

By the time Mike came back with reinforcements, the GoodGym team made great progress. After two extra volunteers joined with loppers and a rake, the slope above the lower woodland path was rapidly cleared. The team took a break to savour tea and biscuits Anna brought for everyone, then Maria and Liuba stayed for an extended session with the Friends of Grove Farm and Sevan and Kash ran off to be on time for their next sessions.

If bramble bash in ancient woodland plus tea and biscuits sounds like your thing, why not join next month's session? Sign up now!