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.

It's been a year since our first visit to Western Road Urban Garden when we met Janpal from Southall Community Alliance and Ash. Throughout that time, we removed an abundance of broken glass, ceramics and rusty, unidentified objects from the soil alongside the fence. We planted trees and shrubs with Ranger Paul. We've been relocating logs with mighty Andre. We helped Mani set up the new polytunnel. And, of course, we've been treated to samosas!

Today was not too different to our spring community missions in 2023. The site changed massively within 12 months, with the new raised beds, the polytunnel and the surviving hedge by the fence. We didn't win all the battles against the weeds and rubbish. Today, we saw that the invasive vegetation had swallowed a lot of the bare soil we had been digging last year. We had to redo the exercise of turning the soil at the back of the garden. The good news was that we were finding much less unwanted things in the dirt. Sevan, Kash and Richard were still finding pieces of glass and springs from a decomposed mattress, but not bucketloads of them. The roots we dug out today were sparse and not too big - apart from one root!

Steph Ducat and Andre attacked a large tree stump growing by the fence. Apparently, some enthusiastic students had a go at it earlier, but after digging around it and cutting parts of it, they had to give up. It took Steph and Andre an hour to get to the root of the problem and dig out the whole stump. Impressive!

Janpal employed Beata to weed last year's hedge and Anuj to plant new trees. Anuj hadn't been doing anything like that since school years, so he appreciated getting involved in it again. Together with Beata, at the end of the session, they both concluded they had learned something new today. Harvey had the furthest to go and made it to Western Road on time to water all the newly planted trees. He also didn't miss the break for the samosas. That's what we call the perfect timing!

Apart from the work at the urban garden, everyone topped up their GoodGym experience with exercise on the way to the task:

• Sevan, Steph and Kash - a canalside run
• Richard - walk from a different town in the borough
• Anuj and Beata - Osterley parkrun, then a run from there to the task
• Harvey - parkrun in South London

Don't miss our next session at Westen Road in April! Sign up here!

Monthly drop-in session at Grove Farm : Would the team be able to make it on time and help Anna and Mike? Goodgymers were busy this morning at different park runs for Ealing Foodbank, then needed to make their way all the way from Hanwell back to Grove Farm. A few members who were not at park run started the mission with clearing the ivy as wood anemones started to come out and needed to ensure the sunlight reached the ground. A few runners then appeared in the woods from Hanwell and went to help clear the fences from the ivy along the path. Then, at last, the walkers arrived after a troublesome journey with delayed bus due to roadworks in the area. Then, the team cleared the ivy, picked up rubbish, and packed the tools. A mission that looked nearly impossible to reach became Mission Possible and accomplished. Another great collaboration between Goodgym and Friends of Grove Farm.