Four GoodGymers walked, cycled and ran to help Cultivate London beautify the green areas around Ealing Hospital this morning. They were all warmed up and raring to go, then they were led into the depths of the hospital, to the Estates office, where they went through a contractor health and safety briefing on the office computers. It covered working at heights, what to do if they found asbestos and how to get permission for digging work. Well, maybe the digging part would be relevant 🤷.

Once out of the basement and back in the sun, the task for the day was to rake and flatten some new flower beds, then scatter wildflower seeds to make this stretch of Uxbridge Road more colourful and increase biodiversity. There was big group of volunteers to help out on the various tasks, which was great.

Rebekah, Chris and Richard got going on one of the beds that needed flattening, moving sand and soil from the far side of the car park, then raking it to be smooth and picking out any big rocks. Sevan had decided to use his brain instead (for once) and was doing some mental maths to calculate the area of each part of a prepared flower bed, then working out the weight of seed and sand mix to be sprinkled on each.

Having done the hard maths, Sevan joined the other 3 as they worked their way along two more beds, making them look their best before the seed planting. The chat turned to work and job hunts, so Sevan semi-jokingly asked Romina if Cultivate had any jobs going where the GoodGymers could do more good stuff. Romina gave each of them had a grilling about any relevant skills they had, other than wheelbarrowing and raking, with a couple of possible collaborations to come.

Chris and Sevan headed off at midday, with Rebekah and Richard staying on into the afternoon to do some seed scattering and moving more soil.

If you want to get involved in improving the hospital grounds for patients, passers by and insects, sign up for next week's session here.

Last week's rainfall, followed by flooding of the Cuckoo Park planting site, forced us to postpone the Tiny Forest session until today. But what a glorious day it was! The sunshine finally arrived, and with it, a large crowd of GoodGymers! Half of today's team were new joiners, and for most of them, like Tia, tree planting was a new experience.

"It was a perfect first session!", said another first-timer, Rebekah.

Why wouldn't it be with the fantastic weather and a fun task, accompanied by samosas, pakora and fruit provided by Earthwatch? Well, for our new joiners, it was about something more.

"Very welcoming atmosphere. It was nice chatting to everyone." - Eliz.

For Eliz, it was the second session, and, although she was a new GoodGymer herself, she already recruited her dad, Mehmet. Mehmet didn't shy away from planting the rather spiky trees (he was particularly fond of hollies) or pulling and tipping the heavy bags with woodchip.

Both Michelle and Beata returned to a GoodGym session after a recovery break, and couldn't have come to a better place. Great to have you both back, and we are hoping to see you more often!

Planting trees was certainly not new to the GoodGym veteran Chris who cycled from GoodGym Richmond. Chris loves a good planting session and has covered many miles all over the capital to put more trees on the map of London! Among others, we planted oaks, birches, hazels, hawthorn, bird cherries, Guelder roses, whitebeams, purging buckthorn and hornbeam, so hopefully, Chris can add some new species to his tree portfolio!

As a part of today's midday planting, Hannah from Earthwatch asked us to do some quality checks of the trees planted by children from local schools in the morning. A few saplings indeed needed a little bit of correction, but generally, the kids had done a marvellous job! So did the GoodGymers and other volunteers. We secured all the whips by spreading mulch all over the Tiny Forest. The woodchip will keep the trees nourished and keep the weeds at bay.

Probably, the most unusual part of today's task was the fact that throughout the sessions we were painted by a local artist, Annabelle, who complimented our red t-shirts as being the perfect complementary colour to the green palette on her watercolour. The meaning of "are you ok with us taking pictures of you?" was just elevated to the next level!

Planting another Tiny Forest was a lovely way to spend a Friday afternoon. After volunteering together a few of us ventured to GoodGym's favourite coffee shop in Hanwell for a cup of coffee and good chat.