Do you remember the story from the most recent session at Popesfield Allotments, where I noted that GoodGym Ealing hadn't visited Cultivate London's plant nursery for two years? Well, such a gap didn't happen this time! Our team was back within three weeks since the April 2026 session, as we had left a job unfinished, and we don't like that.

So, what do we like? The sound of weeds' roots being seamlessly pulled through a membrane, oh yes! This Tuesday evening task was filled with satisfying ambient noises and a sense of achievement.

Conor, Sevan, Steph Ducat and Kash ran from Ealing Broadway to meet another runner - Harvey, cyclist James and walker Anna.

Anna arrived for her first GoodGym session after being recruited by our mutual friend from LAGER Can - what a brilliant turn of events! Anna likes a good litter pick, but nothing beats a green task closer to nature. She arrived ready with small weeding tools and even offered others her spare gloves, which astonished the regulars - usually it's the other way around with the newbies! Neither gloves nor tools were really necessary as the weeds were extremely easy to pull by hand, and that was an utterly satisfying sensation.

With a team of seven and an hour of pulling, sweeping, bagging and pallet-lifting, we finished clearing the entire membrane area, filling two tonne bags with garden waste. Minus a few holes (made by weeds, not us!), the membrane looked like new.

"You could eat dinner from that!" - Harvey.
"Is it dinner time?"

Next Tuesday, we'll have more gardening to do as we'll be helping gardener Cliff maintain the peaceful space for church-goers and residents of South Ealing at St Mary's churchyard. Sign up now!

Kash and Sevan started the day with a mission that wasn't too far away. Mrs T had a bramble patch to be cleared to reduce her anxiety and risk of falls. The brambles weren't the only thing that concerned Mrs T as she said that her husband, now in a care home, had been a big hoarder. Kash and Sevan would find signs of hoarding and other unusual behaviour while they were chopping away.

The plants and trees in Mrs T's garden looked nice and very mature, except for the bramble patch that had exploded next to her back door. It was in danger of spreading and taking over more of the garden, so it needed to be nipped in the bud. Possibly through Mr T's hoarding, Mrs T kept appearing with a wide range of useful and not useful items to help the team. Some rusty shears did turn out to be helpful, while saws and hunting knives were given a pass.

As Kash and Sevan cut further into the patch, they found some unexpected items. First to be uncovered was something that looked like a metal chair. Mrs T explained that it was her sun lounger. Apparently her husband had at one time emptied everything out of the shed and left it in the back garden. The brambles had long since swallowed those items up. Next up was a fan, then a(nother) bow saw, a dragon statue, a car battery and a bottle of motor oil. None of them had done well out of living outside. Kash and Sevan freed them from the spiky vines, but they were probably destined for disposal.

The GoodGymers crammed as many brambles as they could into a black bin so that they could move the cuttings through the house to the front. As Mrs T's bin filled, she called a neighbour and borrowed theirs too and by the end of the task, most of the invaders had been removed and both garden waste bins filled up.

By the end of the mission, Mrs T felt relieved that her garden was back under control. There were still many hoarded items next to the house, probably hiding a lot of brambles underneath. Decluttering those and findimg out what was hiding below would be a future mission and another journey of discovery for some GoodGymers.

One of the greatest quests in Middlesex (not to be confused with Middle-earth) began with the Wizard Sevan the Wise and Kash the Hobbit knocking at Mrs L's door in Hanwell. When a wizard knocks on your door, you don't quite know what to expect, and Mrs L seemed rightfully confused at the sight of the quite otherworldly-looking pair. Sevan explained that they had come to perform a bit of garden wizardry, and Mrs L let them walk through her house into the back garden.

In the backyard, there were weeds to take out from beds and paving, leaves to sweep, and trees and other plants to trim. There was plenty to be done, but only a modest collection of tools to be found in the shed: a children-sized spade, broken loppers and a small fork without a handle. Surely, fantasy heroes could work with that. A more pressing subject, though, was the back gate.

Mrs L insisted there was only one way the garden waste should leave the garden: through the back gate. The problem was that the gate would only open a foot or so, blocked by bulging paving beneath it. On the other side, fly-tipped rubbish had piled up into a solid barrier, blocking the way as if the garden had quietly decided that no one shall pass. No one, that is, except a hobbit.

Who could better serve as the expedition’s “burglar” than Kash - perhaps the closest thing to a real hobbit you could find in Ealing. Kash squeezed through the gate (not an easy feat!) and found herself in a heavily littered green tunnel. Beneath her feet lay fly-tipped bundles of branches, above her, a canopy of overgrown ivy. Kash used her most unlikely but essential power - her short stature - to slip through where others couldn’t. She pushed past a cluster of buckets and pots and soon reached a fork in the alleyway. The left-hand path had been cleared of overgrowth, and through it she could already see the bars of an exit gate at the far end. The right-hand side, by contrast, looked like an impenetrable thicket of brambles. Kash had overheard Mrs L's neighbours mention nettles, foxholes, barbed wire, and all manner of nastiness beyond it - a route no one would reasonably attempt.

Kash tried the left-hand route first, Mrs L's key in hand, but the lock refused to yield. No match. So she turned back. What else could she do? Armed with broken loppers, she carved a narrow path through the brambles on the right-hand side exit, inch by inch, until she reached yet another gate. This time, the key turned. The lock was open. And just like that, the path to the street was revealed.

Meanwhile, back in the garden…

Sevan the Wise, alongside the kind neighbours, had been engaged in a different kind of quest: one of persuasion. With calm words and practical reasoning, they revealed to Mrs L a truth long overlooked. There was, in fact, a far simpler way for the green waste to disappear from the back garden: through the house.

And so, when Kash returned triumphant from her journey - having gone there and back again - the adventurers were granted passage through the house, to dispose of the trimmings into a green bin kindly lent by one of the neighbours. The neighbour also equipped them with a broom and a shovel, which made it possible to sweep the weeds that Sevan had ruthlessly obliterated from the paving with a hoe.

A heroic quest. A path revealed. And, ultimately… entirely unnecessary. Still, every great story needs its hobbit.

Kash and Sevan found task owner Joseph rebuilding his energy levels after a morning of guiding new volunteers. They were a bit green, so needed a lot of support. By contrast, team GoodGym apparently knew what to do to help Joseph plant some epic dudhi:

"We just need to know how deep and wide [the holes need to be]." - Sevan
"You know how to dig holes. You've dug some BIG holes in the past." - Joseph

It was quite warm on the south facing plot. Inside the polytunnel was another level though, reaching 40C+ through the day. It was perfect to grow warm weather vegetables and the team were shown tomatoes, chillies, okra, ginger, sweet potatoes and more, all growing in the soil. As impressive as that was, the GoodGymers were grateful that they were digging outside, even if they were under the afternoon sun.

Joseph had a contact who would give him free dudhi seeds and all that Joseph needed to start his dudhi enterprise were 12 holes, 30cm wide and 45cm deep. After days without rain, the ground was hard, so a hose was set on the trellis covered planting patch to make digging easier.

"I didn't think I was going to get muddy today." - Sevan
"When you come here, you always get muddy". - Joseph

Before they could start digging, the first job was to clear the weeds from the plot. Weeds were having a field day all over the allotment, so everyone turned over the soil to clear it, finding some tough roots from nearby trees hiding underground.

Kash and Sevan eventually did start digging, slowly scooping the wet clay soil out of the ground, dodging around the trellis poles. It was hard going and it was definitely muddy. The tree roots caused problems again too, needing to be broken through or worked around. As holes were completed, Joseph poured his special potting mix into each one, preparing them for the big dudhi planting day tomorrow.

It wouldn't be a proper Friday evening without my usual 7km run (this time twice via Gunnersbury Park) and shop for Mr G. Among other products, the list featured two types of fish: salmon and breaded cod, also sweetheart cabbage.

The Early May Bank Holiday weekend sounds like a time when everyone wants to get away to enjoy a break, right? Wrong! A revolutionary team of 12 GoodGymers descended on Horsenden Farm, redefining Italian cuisine and the rules of landscaping.

Such impressive numbers guaranteed at least a double task, so the team split into two. Sevan, Richard, Thaiza, Amy, Maxime and Afshin went up Horsenden Hill to marvel at the views while dealing with treacherous spikes, while Penny, Danny, Kat, Steph Ducat, Augustin and Kash headed down to the car park to make a very special lasagne.

The first team continued the task started last month at the top of the hill. The goal was to remove as much prickly hawthorn as possible to make space for the Horsenden cows to graze and enrich the ecosystem with their wonderful cow pies - a buffet for countless insects, fungi, and bacteria, and a source of nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium for plants to grow.

With thick gloves and loppers, the six GoodGymers finished off the leftover hawthorn from April and moved on to the next patch, where the newest addition to the team, Amy, spotted a memorial sign and cut through the spiky plants, determined to find out what was written on it. What a start! Amy met us last month at another outdoor task, so we knew she'd fall in love with losing herself in Horsenden's nature. Welcome, Amy!

The hilltop team destroyed the second hawthorn patch in no time and moved on to make a start at the third one, which they had to leave unfinished. Throwing the tangled, spiky cuttings over the fence and pushing them down was not a quick and easy job as one might think. The group made great progress, with some hawthorn still left behind for the next volunteer group.

The second team was a team of cooks. As you can imagine, things can get tricky when you get too many of them. To add to the complexity of the intricate lasagne recipe we had to follow, we were boosted by two additional cooks (other Horsenden volunteers). Luckily, Elsa, our task owner and chef, joined the group to masterfully coordinate the execution of her staple recipe:

Compost Lasagne

(Serves: 1 happy ecosystem)

Prep time: As long as it takes to fill a wheelbarrow
Cook time: A few months (slow food at its finest)

Ingredients

• 4 parts “green waste” 🌿 (plant trimmings + signature “lasagne sh*ts” a.k.a. manure)
• 6 parts woodchip 🪵
• A willing team of GoodGymers

Equipment

• Pitchfork 🍴
• Shovel 🥄
• Wheelbarrow 🛒

Method

1. Lay down a generous base of lasagne sh*ts. This is your rich foundation.
2. Sprinkle a layer of plant waste over the top. Think of it as your herby middle layer.
3. Cover with a thick layer of woodchip to seal everything in and keep things nicely balanced.
4. Drizzle a light splash of compost béchamel (questionable brown liquid) over the layer.
5. Keep layering: manure, greens, woodchip, 2 to 3 times, or until your compost lasagne reaches impressive heights.
6. Let it rest - leave your masterpiece to slowly “cook” down into beautiful compost.

Bon appétit (for the soil)! 🌍

Chef’s tip

The secret ingredient is teamwork and not taking yourself too seriously.

After assembling three impressive lasagne, we left nature to do the rest of the cooking. We then all headed for a well-deserved team lunch, which offered an equally unconventional take on Italian cuisine: pizza with a pickle and egg!

If you think that sounds like a fun thing to do on a Saturday morning, join us next month at Horsenden Farm!