Deep in Walpole Park lies a mulch mountain underneath a thick blanket of fallen leaves. Our job? To dig deep and mine for gold! Or - rather - to dig deep and mine for dark brown mulch, otherwise know as ‘the good stuff’! This nutrient heavy mulch was then to be taken to the kitchen garden to be used as food for the plants there.

First, in the dark and the rain, we climbed the mountain and with spades tossed the leaves aside; Sevan and Kash were first to the top! We hacked at the leaves causing wet (yet also incredibly dusty) avalanches - but we persevered and soon we reached the darkest and tastiest mulch. We filled wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow and Steph took charge of taking the mulch to the kitchen garden.

If you didn’t know, mulch mountains contain all sorts of unexpected obstacles- rocks, weird fumes and logs bigger than you or I - no problem for Kash who dug the logs out and launched them aside.

Finding the ‘good mulch’ was quite a challenge as there were so many layers of wet heavy leaves and half cooked mulch and so, when we did - Amy declared it her favourite task ever.

Surprisingly none of us sunk in the pile and needed to be rescued but also - none of us came away with dry shoes!

November's Three Pigeons signature task tonight with a jog, a workout and lots of GoodGym energy going into the riverside plots we take care of for Richmond Council.

This evening we were joined by Hannah, celebrating a milestone 10th GoodGym task with a visit to Richmond 🥳 Meeting at the Tap, five of us set about a very necessary warm-up as November stretched its cooler arms out to pull us into the night! JP and Monika then set off on a brisk walk along the high street while Hannah, Kash and Liz set off across Richmond Green, discussing the benefits of 'jeffing'. A planned mix of running and fast walking, it can help ease joint impact, enable runners to cover longer distances and has the added benefit of getting to take in the lovely riverside views more too!

At Buccleuch Arcade things were looking good after Saturday's task there, perfect surroundings for a 10 minute bodyweight workout on the lawn. Those who didn't want to join headed straight to the Three Pigeons plot with tools to start some robust weeding, litter-picking and cutting back. When the whole group joined together it was, as always, amazing what eight sets of energetic hands can get done in 45 minutes as a huge Hop plant was removed, a bag of rubbish was plucked from the plants, the border was freed from weeds and a general sweep-up left the plot looking cared for.

Just time for a group photo with the floodlights on before we all scattered back into the night for hot dinners!

We visit our sponsored plot on the first Saturday and second Monday of every month, we would love you to join us!

The mission Sevan and Kash had signed up for was advertised as cutting back a garden ahead of Bonfire Night. Unfortunately, no GoodGymers were available before 5 November, or even the following Saturday, when Bonfire Night would likely be celebrated. The task eventually went ahead on Sunday.

Mission Control had prepared Sevan and Kash for the eventuality of not having any tools on hand. That scenario materialised when Mr T announced that he had neither equipment nor bags for the garden waste. While the task was supposed to focus on the overgrown front garden, dotted with brambles, rumours had it that tools could once be found in a shed in the back garden. Unfortunately, Mr T thought the back garden was completely inaccessible and didn't encourage the GoodGymers to try that route. Sevan and Kash had two choices: admit defeat and back off, or use their hands. They chose the latter.

Luckily, both had their bramble gloves with them and started pulling out thorny plants and snapping sycamore saplings. For the thicker brambles that they couldn't pull out by the roots, they resorted to good old-fashioned Stone Age tools. Sharp-edged rocks may be inferior to a pair of secateurs, but they're equally deadly against brambles in the hands of a determined GoodGymer.

Halfway through the task, by which point the front garden already looked much better (although the waste couldn't be swept up and bagged), Sevan and Kash encountered Mr T's neighbour. The neighbour explained the challenges posed by Mr T's back garden and took Kash on a tour to show her what it looked like from the neighbouring house's first-floor window. It was basically a monster of a bramble forest, untouched for three years, bulging against the fence on the verge of collapsing into the neighbour's garden.

The GoodGymers decided to borrow the neighbour's shears and use the last 30 minutes of the session to convince Mr T to let them investigate his back garden and see the jungle first-hand. And a jungle it was! There was certainly no way to guarantee making it Bonfire Night-proof, even if three sessions had taken place in the previous week!

Behind the back door in the kitchen, the first thing they discovered was vines hanging down the entire length of the stairs to the garden. Just past the entrance, Sevan and Kash spotted a box of tools under a cover. The roof wasn't technically a shed, and the protruding handles of the tools looked too good to be true. The GoodGymers were right not to get their hopes up too high.

All the tools were covered in rust. The loppers moved without needing WD-40, but had a big gap between the blades, which rendered them unusable. The shears wouldn't close, and the pruning shears wouldn't open. In the tools department, the GoodGymers were back to square one. Sevan found a rusty saw in the toolbox and pressed on, hacking away at the brambles and vines as best he could, while Kash took the neighbour's shears and ventured forward, cutting a narrow corridor through the brambles along the fence to see if she could make it as far as the mythical shed or the back fence.

Kash made it quite far into the jungle, stopping about two metres before the end of the garden. She could make out the back wall or fence behind the brambles in front of her. There was also a shape on the much more overgrown left-hand side, but she couldn't cut through the old, thick brambles with the shears. Whether the mythical shed had fully collapsed, and whether there were any tools inside, remains a mystery.

Mr T's jungle is one of those gardens in the GoodGym world that may look insurmountable, but Sevan and Kash believed that, with enough people helping across multiple sessions and the neighbour's support with tools, a difference could be made. The Gunpowder Plot may have failed, but the plan to tackle Mr T's garden was still very much a work in progress.