Cliff, the chief gardener at St Mary’s in South Ealing, told us that the cemetery behind the church was meant to be a pollinator-friendly wildflower space, and not an ostensively manicured garden. Yet, after the spring was in full bloom, the back of the churchyard started getting out of control: nettles, green alkanet and other weeds took over the graves, and even Cliff’s superhuman gardening capability wasn’t enough to keep on top of that expansion. That’s where the GoodGymers stepped in.

Sevan led a group of ten nettleslayers, hungry for an evening pull session in a local jungle. Among them were two new faces in GoodGym Ealing: Giovanni, who cycled to his very first task, and Diana, who, despite being active for a few months as an Achilles guide runner, hadn’t completed an Ealing session until today. She also brought a four-legged support, the pooch Padron (pardon me if I misspelt the name), who made all the hearts instantly melt. Welcome Giovanni and Diana - we hope you’ve enjoyed our collective weeding frenzy!

Steph Ducat, Giovanni, Andy and Cliff attacked the left-hand side of the overgrown churchyard back wall, while Anna, Kash, and Harvey started from the right. Sevan, Diana, A.B., and James worked in the middle and eventually met the other two teams, having pulled or cut all the weeds on their way. In an hour, the stretch of graves along the entire brick wall at the back was weed-free!

Every GoodGym session is an opportunity to learn something new. Harvey told us about soldiers who used to whip their arms with stinging nettles to stay awake during their night watches. Since I wore a short-sleeved top while pulling nettles today anyway, I decided to test that method. I am pleased to report that the nettle stings still work, and I haven’t fallen asleep writing this report on Tuesday night.

As the days are now so long that it is still bright outside when we complete an evening task, there’s no excuse not to take advantage of it and come to the Tuesday night session. The weather has been a sheer delight, too! The next opportunity for an evening experience with GoodGym is next week - don’t miss it and sign up now!

After 4.5 hours of GoodGymming in Hanwell, Sevan and Kash left their home borough and left for Brentford, running 4.5km through picturesque Boston Manor Park and towpath along the River Brent. The riverside run took them to Ms N, who needed help with weeding her back garden.

The priority: to get rid of the “big leaves” growing in between the tall grass. Was it spinach? Kale? Burdock? No one was sure. Ms N claimed she tried one of the leaves raw, and it was okay, but rather chewy. Not proving to have significant culinary potential, the plants were destined to be dug out. But how? Ms N gave the GoodGymers two types of forks and a spade - none was highly effective against very dry and a bit rocky soil. The pair resorted to breaking into the dirt, then breaking the weeds’ roots as low as they could.

A few clusters of young brambles were discovered along the fence and immediately cut close to the ground to prevent the development of a dystopian bramble jungle. Bindweed, nettles and alkanet were the other usual suspects GoodGymers encountered and removed. The wildflowers Ms N was very keen to keep were the poppies, bringing vivid colour into the lush green of a rather untamed lawn. The lawn had to remain untamed as the strimmer with a metal blade Ms N provided wasn’t effective against tall grass.

Scouring through the overgrowth, Sevan uncovered hemlock, which he immediately recognised by its carrot-like leaves and stems dotted with red spots. Sevan knew that hemlock was poisonous when eaten, so he warned Ms N against tasting the plant, then dug out the treacherous root. The knowledge acquired at the sessions in the HANGOT orchards paid off!

In 90 minutes, Sevan and Kash filled the whole green waste bin with weeds, and called it a day, then ran back to Ealing to enjoy the rest of the Sunday.

Mrs L's house was a stone's throw from this morning's Hanwell Hootie wrap up task, so Kash and Sevan made a return visit a week after their last mission for her. They thought they knew what to expect. Trimming, weeding, few tools and very helpful neighbours. That was mostly true today.

Mrs L did want the rest of the flower beds weeded and the trees in the garden to be trimmed. Last week, Kash and Sevan's mission was earlier in the day, so today the helpful neighbours were out. Crucially, Mrs L's loppers that the pair used a week ago were also missing in action. Neither Mrs L nor Kash could remember where they'd stored them 7 whole days ago. They weren't in the shed and they weren't in the house, so Kash made do trimming tree branches with secateurs, which wasn't ideal.

The tools Sevan used for weeding last week were borrowed from a neighbours, so today he used a tiny trowel discovered in a plant pot. Kash dug out some weeds with a large spade and most of the rest weren't too deep rooted, so the small trowel was good enough for Sevan to clear the remaining flower beds.

Near the end of the session, with Mrs L trying to track down another pair of loppers to borrow, Mrs L's pair were found in a potting cabinet. She remembered that she'd put them there because they were broken. Broken or not, they were still just usable, so Kash and Sevan paired to cut down the final branches and get 4 bags of garden waste moved to the front of the house.

In May 2026, Brent Meadow, after a two-year break from Hanwell Hootie, once again returned as the main outdoor venue for the largest one-day free music festival in London. On Saturday, many GoodGymers enjoyed guitar riffs, bumping into friends and rocking the 2026 brown Hootie t-shirts. The following day, six of them were back at the meadow in the morning hours to cover all the tracks showing that such an amazing gig venue had ever existed.

Maria, together with friends from LAGER Can, took care of the remaining festival litter plaguing the meadow. Harvey neatly rolled the Hootie banners, then, together with Sevan, went for a hunt for six heavy buckets with sand that had served as ashtrays the day before.

Breda and Steph Ducat got involved in the main job of the day: packing up the 35,000 (or just a few less) reusable festival cups used year after year by Hootie fans. All the pint and half-pint cups had to be bagged in plastic and transported to the viaduct pub. But had they all been collected? Kash, suspicious of the bin bags scattered around the field, set off on a trashy quest of retrieving the cups mistakenly bagged as rubbish. Ew! Scouring through bin sacks, she rescued dozens and dozens of cups that otherwise would never have seen another festival.

Two hours into the session, the team split to help with loading and unloading cargo in different locations. Sevan and Breda went to Hobbayne Centre with volunteers Sue and Amanda to unload their car, carrying boxes of hiviz, volunteer t-shirts, and spare drinks that hadn’t been consumed at the festival. Meanwhile, Maria, Steph and Kash waited for a van to load the vehicle with a drum kit and the famous 35,000 reusable cups. In the meantime, they helped Ralph dismantle the volunteer tent and pack it into another van.

When Matt drove into the meadow, Maria, Steph and Kash started loading the sacks with cups into the van. Some of the ripped bags miserably fell apart, but that didn’t slow down the team, which rapidly repacked the less fortunate cups. The three GoodGymers raced the van into The Viaduct pub and were ready for action when Matt arrived. Dozens of beer-scented bags were carried to the pub’s store room, generously sprinkling the GoodGymers’ legs with leftovers of beverages in the process. Once the transfer was completed, the community mission was finished.

The GoodGymers not only helped save thousands of reusable cups from annihilation, but also redefined the meaning of beer legs the same day. What a groundbreaking task it was!

After giving our arms a solid workout gardening at HANGOT, a number of GoodGymers decided it was only right to give our legs some exercise too with a post-task social at the Hanwell Hootie.

First stop was Momentum Coffee, where we refuelled before crossing the road to Hanwell Clock Tower to catch some of the afternoon’s buskers. The line-up did not disappoint, featuring a solo singer-songwriter and one of Hanwell’s finest musical institutions... the 40-piece Hanwell Ukulele Group (HUG).

From there, the group split off to explore the many artists performing across Hanwell’s pubs and outdoor venues… but somehow, all roads led back to the main stage at the viaduct meadow.

A number of GoodGymers had volunteered to help with the Hootie set-up and pack-down, and were kindly rewarded by the Hootie team with festival t-shirts and queue-skipping wristbands - a very welcome perk given the popularity of this brilliant volunteer-run free music festival!

Perhaps the best part of the afternoon was bumping into GoodGymers all over Hanwell. A wonderful reminder of the fabulous community spirit of the Hootie and GoodGym!

GoodGym's first visit to Blackberry Corner since October showed a huge transformation. Through spring, things had sprung. Mostly weeds around the fruit trees. HANGOT's Orchard Love day for May looked to clear space around the trees so that they could feed off all of the precious sunlight and water that hit the orchard.

HANGOTers scythed the paths first, with everyone staying out of the way of the swishing blades. Once they'd passed, GoodGymers got rolling with their shears, quickly chopping 2 metre wide circles around the tree trunks. Nettles, grass, cleavers and hemlock were wiped out with each snip. The animal lovers in the group found lots of ladybirds, spiders and snails, which they moved to safety before removing the weeds that they'd been sitting on. Rakers followed the choppers, moving the cuttings into large piles to dry out.

After the trees were given some breathing room, the team moved onto cutting back a large overgrown area at the far side of the orchard and also digging out burdock and hemlock, which needed regular and sustained removal to eventually kill them.

The tasks were completed quickly thanks to a lot of volunteers and a desire to get off to today's Hanwell Hootie music festival. A couple of the ladybirds had the same idea. Rather than searching for a new home in the orchard, they decided to hitchhike on a bag to go on a journey of musical discovery via a coffee stop.