Armed with head torches, bright lights and an hour to make a difference, Kingston GoodGym headed into the darkness at Claremont Gardens to help Kingston Council improve the pond area.

After a briefing from Georgina, we split into two teams. Jonathan, Dave, Rachel and Anna tackled the invasive sumac threatening the pines, quickly filling garden waste bags with the help of saws and loppers.

Meanwhile, Jana, Tom and Georgina took on the two willows beside the pond. Tom sawed through the larger willow’s main trunk, and we chopped up the branches before turning our attention to the smaller tree.

Small willow, BIG roots! All three of us dug and cut our way around its surprisingly deep root system, discovering that the rope edging the pond was tangled in it too.

The larger willow proved too much for our tools and one saw sadly met its match during Jana’s attempt! We focused on the smaller willow instead, managing to remove most of its roots through a determined team effort.

An hour well spent, with bags filled and good progress made. A community group is being sought to help care for the gardens, so hopefully our efforts will sow the seeds for more local involvement.

Well done, everyone! Where there’s a willow, there’s a way!

Over the weekend, in aid of world clean up day 5 goodgymers did their bit by picking up rubbish in their local streets, gardens or public places. Cans, bottles, plastics etc to make these areas look more appealing.

Today, Levita and I headed down to a Meet and Greet event with Kingston’s local Councillors and a ton of brilliant voluntary groups from across the borough. It was the perfect chance to get out there and chat about all the ways GoodGym can lend a hand to organisations doing amazing work in our community!

It was great to catch up with some of our long-standing partners. Always a treat to see the familiar faces at Staywell, Kingsgate Food Pantry, KVA’s Surplus to Supper Hub, Save the World, and Refugee Action Kingston.

We also got to mingle with plenty of new groups to brainstorm future team-ups and hand out leaflets. We connected with:

• Kingston Association for the Blind
• The London Buddy Scheme
• Learn English at Home (LEAH)
• Kingston Carers Network
• The Kingston Society
• Malarum Ithayangal CIC Tamil Women’s Community Group
• Balance Support CIO
• Kingston Voluntary Action (KVA)
• Shine Bright UK
• Kingston Eco-Op
• Superhighways
• Connected Kingston
• Kingston Community Football

Whether we were convincing folks to lace up their trainers and join us for a run, or finding new ways our volunteers can help out local residents, it was such an inspiring day!

Today in the glorious sunshine,several goodgymers roamed their local area tidying up their local areas by clearing any discarded litter lying around.

Best-laid plans often go awry... and tonight was one of these times. Our resilient leader Rachel had organised two tasks for the evening (as our little group is not so little anymore!) but alas one fell through at the last minute so all 13 of us ended up together at Claremont Gardens in Surbiton. Fortunately the task here was big enough to take us all and then some.

We all congregated by the dried up pond in Claremont Gardens and task owner Georgina explained that the pond needed to be stripped back of rubbish, sticks, logs and dead/unnecessary reeds so that it could be filled up again. The liner had unfortunately failed which meant, even after all the rain fall of 2026 so far, the pond was mostly dry.

Many hands really were needed for this task as there was a whole load to do. Sticks and logs were collected from the pond bed and turned into a bug hotel up on the bank; reeds were pulled up from the driest parts; Dead vegetation was removed; huge clumps of reed roots were extracted and swathes of grass were dug up, roots and all. We found a few of our amphibious friends along the way and made sure that they hopped off to a safe spot.

The hour flew by and we made great progress. The next step is to fill the pond and hope that our work means that the water holds this time! There's plenty more work to do in and around the pond so hopefully we'll be back to check it out again sometime soon.

Kingston GoodGym has a long history with the communal garden at Vine Close, which we helped clear ahead of its redesign from the very beginning. It's so satisfying to see how far it has come to the relacing setting and the beautiful pond teeming with wildlife it is today.

Georgina, the biodiversity officer from Kingston, was on hand to get us started and help with nature advice.

Jonathan, Laurel and Marcos got stuck into removing invasive plants around the banks and even made a tiny new frog friend.

Claire, Emma and Adam helped tidy up the surrounding garden and plant pots while Tom and Laura somehow managed to avoid wet feet clearing duckweed from the pond.

Everything looked great afterwards, and we could even see a few newts in the - temporarily - clear pond. A lovely task on a perfect spring evening.