Do you know how many hidden gems are waiting to be discovered in Ealing? Some of them are hidden right in plain sight in the heart of the town! Four new Ealing GoodGymers who joined in the last two weeks uncovered one such place during our Tuesday evening session in August.

We welcomed Sasha, who joined us for her very first GoodGym experience, and Dora, who had actually got involved with us unofficially a few weeks ago. Both of them opted for a short run led by Sevan to pick up the tools from Walpole Park. Conor, Steph Ducat and Kash also met at the Ealing Broadway station for the run.

Alana and Janet, who returned for more GoodGymming after kicking off the adventure at last Wednesday's session, walked to the park together to meet the runners, the cyclists Maria and Amy, and Freya, who made her way directly to the task.

The next stop, after the tool pickup, was the Lammas Community Orchard and Wild Play Area, also known by other names.

"Welcome to the Garden of Eden!" - said Trevor from Ealing Transition, the host of today's task.

Trevor told everyone the story about the orchard, which used to be one of the tennis courts in the Lammas Enclosure between Lammas and Walpole Parks. In 2011, local children planted fruit trees on the tennis hard court surface - and it worked!

"Nature is very resilient." - Trevor.

Today's task was orchard maintenance, including cutting back brambles and pruning the fruit trees. The important part was to recycle the cuttings as material to fill the gaps in the orchard's outer fence, and to make the space safe, but not too manicured.

"Nature doesn't like neatness." - Trevor.

Although we clearly had a preference for rewilded space over sports grounds, the surviving tennis facilities have proven very useful. Janet and Maria were able to source the water for their cans from the tennis club and top up the wildlife pond.

The unexpected attractions in the orchard were a branch with desiccated plums, praised for its beauty, and a crab apple tree - a perfect background for the group photo as it had the most fruit.

"It has so much fruit because no one likes them. They are very bitter." - Trevor.

The evening tasks aren’t over yet! This Thursday, we’re heading to Southall for a walking task. There’ll be no running involved on the night itself, but we’ll be spreading the word about a new beginners’ running programme and helping local people discover a new way to get active - sign up now!

Next Tuesday's session will be led by Steph, who will take us for a short run or walk to St Mary's Church to help remove the weeds from the churchyard garden - register here!

Mr C of Camden had a small garden at the back of his ground-floor flat, but was no longer able to maintain it after losing mobility in his left arm. The garden slowly became what seasoned GoodGymers would call a jungle. It was abundant in brambles, ivy, bushes and lost footballs, but lacked sunlight and room to move.

The space was dominated by an overgrown buddleia surrounded by walls of ivy. Clusters of thick brambles filled the gaps between the branches. On the left-hand wall grew something that could have been a sort of vine - Dutchman's pipe, perhaps? It had thin, dark stems and long, flexible branches capable of climbing walls and other plants. When Kash attempted to pull it, several metres of vine fell from the sky, while another few metres still clung to the ivy growing over the wall, giving the impression of the beanstalk from Jack and the Beanstalk.

Sevan collected most of the footballs in a single place, wondering why no children had knocked on Mr C's door, saying:

"Please, Sir, can I have my ball back?"

In 90 minutes, a remarkable transformation took place. The buddleia shrunk, the brambles disappeared, and sunshine finally shone into the garden. The GoodGymers didn't know what would happen to the footballs, but Mr C certainly had at least some of his garden back.

A last minute change of plans meant that Kash, Maria and Sevan found themselves at Acton Junior parkrun for the second week in a row. Kash and Sevan had found spots on the roster as marshals and Maria took the usually chilled out role of funnel manager.

Today there was some minor trouble in the funnel as the 39 finishers passed through. Two parents disrupted Maria's morning as they joined their children in crossing the finish line. Two runners too caused problems after a sprint finish, leaving Maria to work out who crossed the line first. That was only one of the photo finishes today with 3 pairs of runners crossing the line within a second of each other. What a close, competitive, friendly group of children.

The fourth expedition to Grove Farm in search of the Unholy Grail of biodiversity - Japanese knotweed - brought together volunteers from the local area, from the far south of the borough, and even from beyond its borders. Mike from Friends of Grove Farm decided to lead the task unusually in the afternoon, due to an earlier event at the Grove Farm Nature Reserve - the Slow Worm Safari. Mike told us that only one specimen had been spotted during the event, while the expected number was ten, which wasn't good news for biodiversity. On a positive note, the sighted slow worm was pregnant, so there's still hope that the local legless lizard family will grow.

The quest to find the highly invasive non-native knotweed attracted adventurers like GoodGymers Giles and Jo, who cycled from the South Ealing and Brentford area, Sevan and Kash, who ran, also from the south, having completed two missions on the way, and Afshin, who returned for the second adventure of this kind in a row. The GoodGymers were joined by a returning explorer, Deborah, and Sue, new to Grove Farm. A team of eight resumed their travel up the Coston's Brook ditch.

The regulars knew the drill, the newbies quickly got up to speed: hedge trimmers, shears, loppers, rakes. Clear the path. Make it wider. Put the trimmings aside. Throw logs away from the trench. Do not hurt the other folks in the process.

Today's discoveries:

• Badger burrows
• A rusty shopping trolley
• A tyre
• A single wellie
• A sandbag-reinforced campsite (a secret bunker entrance?)

But all of those artefacts paled in comparison to what we discovered at the end. Even the knotweed. Oh yes, we eventually did reach the knotweed, although some of us, after three previous sessions, had started to doubt whether we'd find it this year. We left the invasive knotweed alone, acknowledging the mission's success from a distance. Then all the eyes landed on the most unexpected finding, waiting for us under the crown of a large fallen willow whose branches Mike meticulously sawed off.

It was a geocache. Afshin opened the container and found an Elvis CD and logbook with an entry from 23rd May 2005! Everything was soaked, and we couldn't reveal other pages of the notebook without destroying them. The artefact from over two decades ago now needed some drying before getting reinstalled in its location.

Meanwhile, a much younger thing that could be found in the park needed quite the opposite - plenty of water. On the way out of the woods, we visited the black poplar tree the GoodGymers helped plant in December last year and lent Mike a hand in watering it, before returning to the tool container to tidy and lock up the equipment.

As a former pet shop owner and importer of birds and pets, Mr B knew a thing or two about animals. That meant that Mr B knew that he had a problem with foxes in his back garden. They kept making a mess there and as his eyesight had gotten worse, he wasn't able to keep the garden tidy anymore.

What Mr B told the GoodGymers:

"They've taken the head off a doll and ripped it to pieces"

What Kash heard because of Mr B's accent:

"They've taken the head off a doe and ripped it to pieces" 🦌😵

As Mr B had recently slipped on some twigs, Kash and Sevan's lines of enquiry were to:

1. Dust the paving for paw prints, removing any garden waste in their way
2. Clear sight lines by chopping any plants growing onto and over the paths
3. Investigate anything the foxes had left behind, including shredded deer

The pair started by sweeping and chopping the patio area nearest the house where they found lots of dried needles from a supposedly evergreen thuja tree overhead. There were huge fig trees towering over them too and clusters of white fluffly stuffing in the flower beds. Evidence of a potential teddy bear murder, so the fluff was collected for safe keeping 👮.

"I don't see any of the usual signs of foxes" - Sevan
"No..." - Kash
...
"I found a sign."
"I covered it with some cardboard."
"It smells! 🤢" - Kash

Well, that figured. Where there are foxes, there's fox 💩. Kash's shoe was also put in the evidence log.

Kash, now single shoed, chopped the bushes blocking the passage to stage 2 where the GoodGymers found on the grass a bunch of rotten bananas, some food containers, more white stuffing and yellow fur. Further evidence for the log book. Photographs were taken and catalogued.

Sevan concluded the investigation when he discovered branding on the yellow fur of a dog toy company. This was a case where the victim had been wrongly identified. No dolls or teddy bears had been killed, only a canine's companion.

There were still mysteries to be solved. Who was eating takeaways in Mr B's back garden 🥡 and why were a bunch of rotten bananas sitting on the grass 🍌? Fingers were again pointed at the foxes and there were rumours of the foxes having stolen them from local shops. Without any hard evidence Kash and Sevan couldn't take action, so they filed their paperwork and said that they'd keep an eye on things and come back again if there were more unusual occurrences.

One Saturday in August, Sevan and Kash showed up at Mr R's bright and early. The older gentleman had been one of the first customers of their mission alliance, so the GoodGymers had experience in managing his large front garden. Yet, today Mr R had other plans.

The priority was the back garden (which Kash never visited), more specifically, maintaining Mr R's relationship with his neighbours by appropriate bramble management along the fence. Mr R sensed he could maximise the value by splitting the team, and decided that Kash would stay at the front (and never see the back garden) and Sevan would take care of the brambles with a strimmer at the back. Sevan politely objected to that task allocation and headed to the front, leaving Kash with what she liked most: power tools.

The power tool disappointed Kash in the power dimension. It wasn't fierce enough to deal with the thicker bramble stems, nor was it practical against the long young shoots, which kept getting caught in the mechanism, stopping it from spinning. Kash decided to use the shears she had noticed on the way to the garden and summon help.

Sevan, having removed the biggest weeds at the front, appeared in the back garden. Having tested the strimmer's effectiveness himself (not satisfactory), he grabbed another pair of shears and, together with Kash, cleared the brambles growing within a metre and a half of the fence. Kash, armed with brambleproof gloves, packed the trimmings in the green bin.

More work remains to be done, but the good relationships with the neighbours have been protected for the time being.