This week we returned to the Independent Newham Users' Forum (INUF), the user-led mental health charity based at Ithaca House in Stratford. INUF's community hub hosts drop-ins, yoga, art, dance and all sorts of wellbeing sessions, and the garden provides a calm, therapeutic space for everyone who uses it — or at least it will do, once we've been able to help get it back into shape.

A brilliant turnout of GoodGymers arrived to find that the back of the garden had been making the most of the summer sun. Brambles scrambling over the walls, buddleia with ambitions of becoming a tree, and nettles claiming a fair amount of territory. This week's mission: get right to the back of it all and take the space back.

We got stuck into weeding, pruning, sawing and bagging. Highlights included:

• Taming the buddleia and blackberry brambles along the boundary wall
• Giving the olive tree a much-needed haircut, with some impressive saw work on the lower branches
• Digging out weeds by the root — one heroic root ball very deserving of the photo
• Cutting back the nettles and undergrowth around the compost bins so they're actually reachable again
• Filling an impressive fleet of black bags with green waste

Special shout outs this week: to Lucinda for some cross-border GoodGymming — thanks for lending Newham your trowel skills! And it was lovely to see Steven and Bianca back at the garden — clearly the assorted weeds didn't put them off last time.

By the end of the evening the transformation was plain to see: the back of the garden went from a bit of a jungle to a clearer, open space, with a liberated olive tree and more room for the peaceful, welcoming garden INUF's community deserves.

Thanks to Pat at INUF for having us — we'll schedule a return for September - and a huge thank you to everyone who came along. These sessions can only happen if we have INUF volunteers (sorry), so please keep coming back!

After a day of fairly atrocious weather, the skies finally took pity on us and cleared just in time for our Tuesday evening mission to the Lighthouse & Gardens, hidden away behind the fences near Stratford International. If you’ve walked past without realising what’s there — trust us, it’s a brilliant little community space.

It was great to welcome Fuad and Eugene back after a few busy weeks at work, and the team set off on a scenic jog through the Olympic Park towards the gardens. A tube strike delay meant our host Sharon was running a little behind schedule, but GoodGymmers are nothing if not adaptable, so we filled the gap with an impromptu football skills session that definitely featured more enthusiasm than technical ability (speaking for myself at least).

Once Sharon had arrived and given us some directions, we got on with dismantling some rotten wooden planters that had seen better days. This turned out to be a satisfyingly varied task: digging out the soil, then deciding which demolition technique to deploy. Some sections responded nicely to careful unscrewing, while others required the much more cathartic “smash it apart and hope for the best” approach.

By the end of the evening we’d cleared quite a few planters, making a real difference for the small number of regular volunteers here, who wouldn’t have been able to tackle such a structural job themselves. It’s always rewarding knowing that our evening’s effort can make life easier for the volunteers who dedicate so much time to maintaining this valuable community space.

A lovely evening, a hidden oasis, and just enough dry weather to get the job done — we’ll hopefully be back in a couple of months to help again!

Check out all our upcoming sessions — including a bonus Saturday morning mission at Little Ilford Community Garden this weekend!

It was welcome sunshine that greeted us in Maryland this morning as we made a return visit to see Sue and her planters (of the "inanimate wooden" kind, not of "tea"...).

She had already forewarned us that today's task was painting (something we're always up for, especially when it's bright and sunny outside), and was clearly well prepared as her shopping trolley was overflowing with items that a modern day Michaelangelo would have been proud of.

After a quick round of weeding to tidy up some of the planters that we hadn't tended to during our last couple of visits, the paint trays, brushes, gloves and tins of white primer appeared, and once Graham had carefully done the pouring, Rosa, Hilary, Eugene and Nick positioned themselves along the wooden sides to get started, and as with all good painters, chatted contentedly as we worked. Helpfully Sue had marked with a cross (confusingly...) the blocks that she wanted painting - forfeits would apply to anyone who strayed outside of the lines.

As if by magic, we were soon joined by Kevin and Sharon, making a very welcome return to tasking, and it took Sue all of two seconds to put a paint brush in Kev's hand and tell him to start work...

After a good ninety minutes of careful brushing and much concentration, we soon had the three large planters primed with different sized white blocks (Piet Mondrian would've been proud of our efforts). Sue's intention is to then apply a range of different colours onto the primer which will then give the planters a more unconventional "artistic look"...a return visit surely beckons for us all to complete the masterpiece...