It's been two years since GoodGym Ealing popped up at Popesfield Allotment for a task - can you believe it? While we supported Cultivate London at their projects in Acton and Hanwell, it was high time to revisit the plant nursery at the youngest allotment site in Ealing. And what did we see? The plant nursery has been doing well, but the membrane underneath the pallets with plant pots needed some TLC.

Steph, Sevan and Kash ran a short distance to Popesfield, but for Steph, the difficulty didn't decrease with the mileage as he carried a huge work backpack, worthy of standing for a military training rucksack. The three met Harvey and Maxime, the latter recently having led his first session as TaskForce - congratulations, Maxime! Maxime had led a weekend task nowhere else but in Popesfield, so everyone was hoping to use his know-how about opening all the locks to get to the site and the tools. Fortunately, the instructions were clear, and the team didn't need to rely on specialist knowledge.

The job was simple: pull out the weeds creeping out from the black membrane in front of the sheds, sweep debris, and place all the waste in a tonne bag. Five GoodGymers approached the big job with zeal and thoroughness, pulling the grass from the membrane like there was no tomorrow. In an hour, they cleared the weeds and gravel from the whole open area of the membrane, leaving only parts of the paths between pallets unfinished.

What a thorough job! I am truly impressed, and you say you are not gardeners? - Romina, task owner from Cultivate London.

Next week, GoodGym Ealing opts for an indoor task at the Tuesday group run (just about when it starts getting lighter and warmer in the evenings!). We will be helping to clean and organise a children’s activity space at St Mary's in South Ealing. Sign up now!

Sevan and Kash had visited Mrs R in Shepherd’s Bush a year and a half ago for a hedge trimming task. Back then, the lady had lived upstairs and struggled to keep all the neighbours happy: some complained about her hedge getting out of control, others were disgruntled about GoodGymers making too radical cuts to it. This year, it turned out, Mrs R had moved downstairs following a fire in her previous flat. That meant one of the neighbours was no longer on the list of people to please, but the challenge of keeping the hedge and the tree in the front garden trimmed remained. Unfortunately, Mrs R has lost her tools in the incident in her upstairs flat, so Sevan and Kash couldn’t do any cutting back and had to find another job.

Mrs R thought that moving heavy pots with plants to the back garden would be a good alternative to improve accessibility for her wheelchair, bin men, the ambulance crew and the firefighters. The lady learned the hard way that large pots obstructing the path to the front door and the windows posed a serious safety risk for someone like her.

Mrs R must have felt much better than the week before when Steph had paid her a visit and had transformed an even more chaotic space into a neat, tidy garden. She asked for a chair and spent the whole session with Sevan and Kash in the front garden, instructing them and telling stories about how important gardening had been in her family.

”It’s such a lovely day to do this today!” - Mrs R.

The older lady was a keen gardener, in love with roses and lilies of all colours you could imagine. She’s been a winner of an award for the best garden in West London for four years, just like her dad, a gardener, had been winning prizes for his work. Mrs R believed that the art of gardening would keep her children out of trouble, so she taught them to get busy in the garden and stay away from the gangs. Together, they grew not only flowering plants. They also had a cherry tree and a veg bed with potatoes, aubergines, footlong cucumbers and four types of chillies - impressive!

Back in the present, Sevan and Kash were staying out of trouble, exercising their muscles and brains in an effort to transport all the pots worth keeping (a.k.a. the heaviest ones) to the backyard. Some of the pots they carried without emptying individually, others were carried in tandem. There were pots that had to be rolled over the carpet through the house, making a terrible mess (which Mrs R had accepted). Finally, for the really big boys, Sevan and Kash decided on emptying them. The best soil made it to the back garden in plastic buckets, where Kash had re-planted six rose bushes the GoodGymes had uprooted from the largest pots. What initially looked like a mammoth task for strongmen has been achieved by two Ealing GoodGymers, even the miraculous transport of a rosemary plant with the soil after its pot fell apart!

”You've got to have faith” - commented Mrs R, George Michael-style.

Sevan and Kash finished the session with a bit of sweeping and separating the rubbish from the pots worth giving away, which they had left in front of Mrs R’s garden for interested (and able to lift!) people to collect.