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!

Tonight’s happy band of GoodGymers went to Jubilee Square to the scene of the Great Woodchip Mountain!

We shifted, spread and raked our way through a serious amount of woodchip, filling every available nook and cranny around Jubilee Square.

The result? A much more even surface underfoot, a considerably tidier and more pleasing-looking space, and hopefully a few less opportunities for those pesky weeds to stage their next invasion.

There was also time for a good old litter pick.

And a big GoodGym welcome to Adamtonight. Always great to see fresh faces joining the gang — new blood is very much encouraged!

This week GoodGym Kingston headed to Elm Road Recreation Ground to help the Friends of Elm Road Rec with some autumn maintenance.

Playgrounds and recreation grounds are such important community assets we were pleased to be able to pop down to lend a hand to give this one some attention. Our task was to tackle the weeds and fallen leaves building up around the playground, particularly beneath the fences and along the perimeter, where debris can create trip hazards and litter can accumulate.

Armed with bags, litter pickers, secateurs, and rakes, the team got stuck into clearing weeds, collecting litter and sweeping up the autumn leaves. The nights are certainly drawing in as we all had to have have our head torches on by the end!

What a great turnout we had too. This week we had a running, walking and cycling group. We were also delighted to welcome two new GoodGymers to the team. A lovely way to spend an evening, get active and give something back to a local community space.

Big thanks to the Friends of Elm Road Rec for having us and providing a great collection of tools. We hope the recreation ground and playground is looking a little tidier - before another drop of autumn leaves!

Tonight’s GoodGym adventure took our group in two directions - to Canbury Community Gardens and Latchmere Park.

The Latchmere Park task was quite straightforward - fill 5 planters with compost. Just a small matter that the compost was in 3 1/2 ton sacks about 100m away from the planters! Emily, Ken, Laura, Petra and Dave donned their gloves and proceeded to fill and empty countless wheelbarrows. the time flew and the task completed with 5 mins to spare. Off to the pub!

Slightly more involved at Canbury Gardens with compost to turn, an elderflower tree to tackle, watering to do and gardening to squeeze in before darkness descended.

Claire kicked things off with an excellent briefing, particularly impressive given the jet lag from her recent trip to Korea! Rachel then provided an unexpected highlight by confidently picking up one of the resident chickens. Despite never having held a chicken before, she looked like a natural, comparing it to picking up her three-legged cat. The chicken seemed perfectly content! 🐔

Luke, Saber and Jonathan got stuck into turning the compost, while also attempting to secretly sign Rachel’s birthday card without her noticing.

Meanwhile, Jana and Marie-Noëlle gave the dead elderflower tree a giant haircut. Marie-Noëlle wielded the enormous loppers on the larger branches, carefully avoiding the tomatoes below, while Jana tackled the smaller ones. Saber later took over with a saw and ended up up the tree, prompting a few concerned looks as we watched his balancing act! 🌳😂

Claire tracked down the wheelbarrows and collected water from the river with Rachel, who later became our human lighting department as daylight disappeared.

Jana then tackled one final job, digging a hole for a donated berry bush, which we just about managed to get planted and watered before darkness took over. 🌱

With everything wrapped up, Claire entertained us with tales from Korea.

Compost turned, tree dramatically restyled, water collected, bush planted, chicken cuddled and birthday card covertly signed, another productive and slightly chaotic GoodGym evening! 💪🌿🐔

Tonight we were back at our old favourite Canbury Gardens and despite rain horizon there was still lots of watering to do both at GoodGym flowerbed and in the Community Garden.

Sabir, Luke, Dave, Tom and Jonathan filled bucket upon bucket with water and hauled them across the park to Louise, Hannah, Amy and Claire who watered all the plants.

Meanwhile Marcos was busy filling up the waterbutts from the water as it was delivered.

By the end we had a great system going and waterbutts 4,5,6,7 and 8 were filled up ready for watering by the Community Garden volunteers.

After picking a few tomatoes and beans it was time to head home.