Roots of our Labour

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

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