Even in the absence of Janpal from Southall Community Alliance, the April community day at Western Road Urban Garden still went ahead. When our team arrived, we discovered that Paul from Ealing Allotments Partnership had brought the samosas, which made him immediately recognisable as our leader, so we enquired about jobs for the day.

One of the first GoodGymers to show up was Freya, who cycled for her first task with us and was no stranger to working at community allotments thanks to her link with Artification's project in North Acton!

Welcome to the GoodGym family, Freya!

Christos, who ran to Southall along the canal, and Milly, who walked to the task, joined Paul, Katy, Andre and Adel in moving a pile of wood to make space for a new pond. They later switched to a carpentry job with Mani, who came with his toolbox and a saw, hoping to cut the frames for the long-anticipated doors to the Western Road polytunnel. Sevan and Kash, after a picturesque run from Northfields, along with Jags, who had plenty of energy after the parkrun, joined Freya at hay bales. All the hay had to be removed before the next week's council work to make a driveway to the allotment. No more muddy shoes at the next Western Road community day?

Following everyone's favourite samosa break, the GoodGym crew grabbed mattocks and spades to start digging the future pond. The plan was to make it 1.5 m deep. In the meantime, Mani was checking out how the newly cut wooden planks fit as the polytunnel door frame. He went inside and outside Southall's largest polyethene palace.

"Anyone wants to use the sauna?", he asked.

"Soon, we will have a jacuzzi here too!" replied the pond diggers.

Despite not being a massive group, all the volunteers made fantastic progress in transforming Western Road into a prime spa resort! After the task, the GoodGymers, led by Jags, went for a walk to treat themselves to lovely views along the canal and well-deserved coffee.

It's been a year since our first visit to Western Road Urban Garden when we met Janpal from Southall Community Alliance and Ash. Throughout that time, we removed an abundance of broken glass, ceramics and rusty, unidentified objects from the soil alongside the fence. We planted trees and shrubs with Ranger Paul. We've been relocating logs with mighty Andre. We helped Mani set up the new polytunnel. And, of course, we've been treated to samosas!

Today was not too different to our spring community missions in 2023. The site changed massively within 12 months, with the new raised beds, the polytunnel and the surviving hedge by the fence. We didn't win all the battles against the weeds and rubbish. Today, we saw that the invasive vegetation had swallowed a lot of the bare soil we had been digging last year. We had to redo the exercise of turning the soil at the back of the garden. The good news was that we were finding much less unwanted things in the dirt. Sevan, Kash and Richard were still finding pieces of glass and springs from a decomposed mattress, but not bucketloads of them. The roots we dug out today were sparse and not too big - apart from one root!

Steph Ducat and Andre attacked a large tree stump growing by the fence. Apparently, some enthusiastic students had a go at it earlier, but after digging around it and cutting parts of it, they had to give up. It took Steph and Andre an hour to get to the root of the problem and dig out the whole stump. Impressive!

Janpal employed Beata to weed last year's hedge and Anuj to plant new trees. Anuj hadn't been doing anything like that since school years, so he appreciated getting involved in it again. Together with Beata, at the end of the session, they both concluded they had learned something new today. Harvey had the furthest to go and made it to Western Road on time to water all the newly planted trees. He also didn't miss the break for the samosas. That's what we call the perfect timing!

Apart from the work at the urban garden, everyone topped up their GoodGym experience with exercise on the way to the task:

• Sevan, Steph and Kash - a canalside run
• Richard - walk from a different town in the borough
• Anuj and Beata - Osterley parkrun, then a run from there to the task
• Harvey - parkrun in South London

Don't miss our next session at Westen Road in April! Sign up here!

After the morning session at the Western Road Urban Garden, where we were with Mani from Southall Community Alliance working, stayed behind with Adel another volunteer as heard that Mani needed us to help move and plant trees in Southall Green which was nearby. We noticed the trees earlier in the day and thought we were dealing with them at the plot, which was not the case. Six trees were rooting around the entrance to be move to Southall Green to be planted amongst other tress that were previously planted by Mani and the Southall community Alliance. Six trees and six volunteers ready for a move. The team took shovels, wheelbarrows including one with a flat tyre(abandoned) and pure human power to move the trees to the park. Adel and myself lifted one of the bigger trees as in a bag : great gym session. 2 for 1 : 2 volunteers per tree so 1st round we started digging holes to be able to plant the fruit trees. We hit stones, rocks and bricks!!! Round 1 : volunteers victory. Returned to the plot to get the 2nd round of trees which were bigger and heavier!! We swapped the wheelbarrows for a trolley and both Adel and myself tackled the enormous tree and carried it 80% of the way then took the trolley as too heavy and we needed to stop often to regain some force. Same action with digging and breaking bricks and ensuring that the trees were settled and stable in their new location : what a tree-t for them. Tree-mendous efforts from the team and great satisfaction of seeing trees in a local park which will have fruit at a later stage.

Yesterday 7 goodgymmers from far and wide joined us to help out the fabulous crew at Western Road Urban Garden in Southall.

Rain didnt defeat us and once we got there it had actually stopped!

The super 7 had walked, run (some even parkrun) and cycled their way there to join the efforts.

Milly arrived early to meet the attendees and was quickly tasked with rehoming several plantpots.

Main tasks were helping Manny with the Polytunnel, it needed a few repairs and tall people to support in the tricky corners. Sevan headed this up drawing in a crowd for support as people arrived.

The other job was digging away, turning the ground ready for some more future planting. the allotment had been left derelict for years so the thing you can find in that mud- from roman pottery to some very old glass bottles and more. kash and milly got to this with Chris, Michelle, Suz and Louis joining after the polytunnel completion.

We had a well needed samosa break and a cup of tea and set back to work! thanks to the team at western road for always looking after us!

Thank you to crew from Hounslow and Richmond Goodgym for joining!

Please check out other tasks coming up this week for more of the action!

Janpal from Southall Community Alliance needed help. His current property, Western Road Urban Garden, wasn't meeting his needs. What he really needed was room for a shed, so he put a call in to GoodGym Ealing to help out.

Local property experts Kash, Madhan and Sevan came to take a look. They could see that Janpal's urban garden had been through a lot of renovation recently, with new beds filled with ripe and ripening vegetables such as cucumbers, pumpkins, chillies and aubergines. A lot of time and care had clearly gone into it.

Finding a new urban garden for Janpal was a tough ask for the team, never mind finding 4 to given Janpal a choice of, taking a tour of each one so that he could see how he felt about each one. Instead, they saw potential at Western Road that Janpal could unlock. There was a prime location for a shed that was currently covered with a log pile 🪵🪵🪵. They conferred and realised that they could make Janpal's property dreams come true without the hassle of moving sites.

Unusually for property experts, they decided to do the transformation themselves. They grabbed some wheelbarrows, slipped on their gardening gloves and got to work. A new location in the urban garden for the log pile was identified and the barrows started to flow, full of logs, to their new home.

Some of the logs were small and easy to move, while others were large, heavy or unusually shaped hunks of wood. It took a lot of team work to load and unload them and their were some mishaps along the way, including one totalled wheelbarrow with a warped bed and a buckled wheel. The hot weather didn't help either, so the team took breaks for drink and samosa top ups.

Through the transformation, local celebrities, including a councillor came to see what was taking place in Janpal's urban garden. They saw the activity and came to talk to Kash too to understand more about the services that GoodGym offers 🤩.

After 3 hours, Janpal was overjoyed. Now he could see the vision too and where the shed would sit. There was still more that Janpal wanted to achieve though. Garden specialist Harvey arrived to help with the next stage, moving woodchip across the site to keep the new plant beds well hydrated.

With their tasks complete, the GoodGymers left Janpal to peruse a selection of shed catalogues to find the perfect one for his garden 📚.

As much as some of us dream of a cosy indoor task in the winter, GoodGymers look forward to being in the open during springtime and enjoy the workout and fresh air. Western Road community clean-ups are perfect for muscle training outdoors and today's event was no different. There was a good share of usual digging with mattocks and spades, shovelling and wheelbarrowing woodchips, lifting rubble and chopping roots. Our mission was to prepare the next stretch of soil for the new hedge and planting the trees before days get too warm.

Madhan was first to arrive and started work in a corner of the urban garden where there were exceptional amounts of branches and debris to remove. Next to arrive were Sevan and Kash whose morning running wasn't enough for them. They grabbed mattocks to burn some more energy 🔥 Roughly at the same time Milly showed up, and brought a special guest. It was GoodGym first-timer, Ken a.k.a. Milly's Dad. He came all the way from Cheshire. Despite being a newbie at GoodGym, he was brought a wealth of experience of GoodGym-style work in forests. We soon realised there was one more GoodGymer already at the site but incognito - Jags! Even if recently not visible at GoodGym sessions, Jags had been involved in plenty of community work in Southall. It was great to see him again working with the other GoodGymers ☺️

There was one more person everyone else was waiting for - the first Ealing GoodGymer to reach the legendary status of 500 good deeds! We all looked forward to celebrate Harvey's fantastic achievement today. Finally the King arrived 👑 being humble and trying not to get too much attention. When there was time for a break (and, of course, the famous samosas! 😋), Harvey had no choice but to stop hiding. We had him wear his crown and wielding his GoodGym 500 Rockstar trophy 🤘 in front of all the paparazzi! 📸

After the break for refreshments, we came back to the hard work, followed by hedge planting under the expert guidance from the ranger Paul. Madhan was the one who planted most of the trees 🌱 Who would have thought he would plant so many trees with GoodGym given that he had done for the first time in his life only early this year!

It was a beautiful, sunny day and we thoroughly enjoyed helping the organisers Janpal, Mani and Ashok make the Western Road Urban Garden a bit of a prettier place. We are looking forward to the next task they have for us, hopefully in May!