"It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperilled in a hundred battles." - Sun Tzu, The Art of War.

Elthorne Park saw many battles between the burdock and Ealing GoodGymers. Maybe not a hundred, but at least eight in the recorded history. The ninth encounter was going to be a special one.

"Take advantage of the enemy's unpreparedness; travel by unexpected routes and strike him where he has taken no precautions." - Sun Tzu, The Art of War.

Five GoodGymers unexpectedly descended on Elthorne Park on Thursday, breaking the four-year-old rule of confronting their enemy on Tuesday evenings. They came from different directions, using diverse modes of transport to surprise and surround burdock. Richard and Kash ran to the park, Amy and Shree cycled, and Dora walked. All GoodGymers were carrying sharp loppers and protective gloves.

It was the very first GoodGym session for Shree, whom we warmly welcomed as she went into battle with the invasive plant with unwavering enthusiasm.

”To know your enemy, you must become your enemy.” - misatributed to Sun Tzu.

Some of us took that advice to become the enemy quite literally, letting the sticky burrs cover us head to toe, to the point where we had more burrs on us than a real burdock plant!

It took us one hour in total to locate a burdock-ridden area along the path from the Bambi statue to the River Brent, just ahead of Osterley Lock, and cut back large patches of the invasive plant. We dropped all the cuttings behind a nearby woodchip pile, creating our own heap towering over its neighbour, to avoid the spread of burdock seeds outside that area. Hopefully, next year we’ll see fewer burdock clusters in the south of Elthorne Park!

If a conservation session in Hanwell like the one above (minus the burdock) sounds like your thing, why not join us on Saturday the 12th September at one of community orchards in Hanwell?

If you don’t want to wait that long, we have an outdoor session for you this Saturday at Horsenden Farm, followed by team lunch. Sign up to be part of it!

Do you know how many hidden gems are waiting to be discovered in Ealing? Some of them are hidden right in plain sight in the heart of the town! Four new Ealing GoodGymers who joined in the last two weeks uncovered one such place during our Tuesday evening session in August.

We welcomed Sasha, who joined us for her very first GoodGym experience, and Dora, who had actually got involved with us unofficially a few weeks ago. Both of them opted for a short run led by Sevan to pick up the tools from Walpole Park. Conor, Steph Ducat and Kash also met at the Ealing Broadway station for the run.

Alana and Janet, who returned for more GoodGymming after kicking off the adventure at last Wednesday's session, walked to the park together to meet the runners, the cyclists Maria and Amy, and Freya, who made her way directly to the task.

The next stop, after the tool pickup, was the Lammas Community Orchard and Wild Play Area, also known by other names.

"Welcome to the Garden of Eden!" - said Trevor from Ealing Transition, the host of today's task.

Trevor told everyone the story about the orchard, which used to be one of the tennis courts in the Lammas Enclosure between Lammas and Walpole Parks. In 2011, local children planted fruit trees on the tennis hard court surface - and it worked!

"Nature is very resilient." - Trevor.

Today's task was orchard maintenance, including cutting back brambles and pruning the fruit trees. The important part was to recycle the cuttings as material to fill the gaps in the orchard's outer fence, and to make the space safe, but not too manicured.

"Nature doesn't like neatness." - Trevor.

Although we clearly had a preference for rewilded space over sports grounds, the surviving tennis facilities have proven very useful. Janet and Maria were able to source the water for their cans from the tennis club and top up the wildlife pond.

The unexpected attractions in the orchard were a branch with desiccated plums, praised for its beauty, and a crab apple tree - a perfect background for the group photo as it had the most fruit.

"It has so much fruit because no one likes them. They are very bitter." - Trevor.

The evening tasks aren’t over yet! This Thursday, we’re heading to Southall for a walking task. There’ll be no running involved on the night itself, but we’ll be spreading the word about a new beginners’ running programme and helping local people discover a new way to get active - sign up now!

Next Tuesday's session will be led by Steph, who will take us for a short run or walk to St Mary's Church to help remove the weeds from the churchyard garden - register here!

It's been over 50 consecutive days - and counting - without any rain in some parts of London, and Western Road Urban Garden in Southall required a constant effort from Janpal and volunteers to help the site keep up with the ongoing heat. The exotic vegetables inside the polytunnel were doing well, and the veg plot we had cleared, woodchipped and partially planted only a month ago started already producing crops such as aubergines and tomatoes! None of that came without a price. Manual watering of veg beds took a lot of time and energy and wouldn't be sustainable in the long term. That's something the architect of Western Road community garden Ash wanted to address for a while.

In February this year, we had taken first steps towards executing Ash's vision of installing two 1000-litre rainwater containers. The mud wasn't going to serve as a reliable base for a tonne of water in a single container, so after digging out the soil, we'd been looking forward to pouring the concrete into the square spaces for a few months. Today was the day to make Ash's vision reality!

Seven GoodGymers came to support Western Road on a Saturday morning in August:

• Walkers: Angela
• Runners: Sevan and Kash
• Cyclists: Scott, Amy and Steph
• Cyclists/parkrunners: Richard

The Plant Squad

Angela, Amy and Janpal had plenty of tasks to do: from weeding the bed alongside the polytunnel, to harvesting and watering the new veg plot. In the polytunnel, they discovered a watermelon that looked pretty good on the outside, but a closer look revealed a small hole and the fact that the fruit was half eaten inside! Judging by the size of the hole, it looked like a rat, rather than Mr Fox, was the prime suspect this time. To save the other juicy crops, Janpal ordered the harvesting of the green tomatoes before the rat laid its eyes on them. Amy found some very long chili peppers, and everyone had a chance to see ripe snake gourds.

Janpal's top tip for cooking a snake gourd:

"Make sure to take the skin off and discard the seeds. We haven't done it last time, and that was the most bitter thing I've ever had!"

The Concrete Cowboys

The group keen to learn concreting skills joined Ash and started with combining the mixture for a base for the water container:

• 4 parts shingle
• 2 parts coarse sand
• 1 part cement
• plasticiser.

While Steph, Richard and Sevan mixed the concrete in a tray to wheelbarrow it to the destination hole surrounded by a wooden frame, Scott, Kash and Ash cleared the weeds inside and around the frame, assisted with pouring the mix, then levelled and tamped the concrete.

The team used up all the resources allocated for one of the bases, then threw in some rubble to bulk up the base, but there wasn't enough material to finish off that stage of the project. Despite great teamwork and solid progress, we'll need to come back to finish off the job when more materials are available. Join us next Wednesday!

It's been a tough summer for the weeds at St Mary's Churchyard Garden in South Ealing. First, the unforgiving drought, then the mighty gardener Cliff, and now this - a horde of GoodGymers!

Even the train disruptions during the heatwave couldn't hinder the unstoppable active transport enthusiasts: group runners led by Sevan - Steph Ducat and Kash, a solo runner Richard, cyclists Amy, Scott and Maria, and walkers James and Diana.

Thirsty and depleted weeds growing by the northern wall of the churchyard could not stand a chance against the assault of spades, forks, mattocks and shears carried by the gang in red t-shirts. Chopped, pulled or dug out, the weeds became green waste to be rapidly raked away and loaded into a wheelbarrow. From there, there was only one way - onto the giant compost heap.

The transformation of the area was remarkable: from a green (yes, it somehow managed to stay green, unlike the dried grass) carpet of weeds into a levelled layer of woodchip. Cliff was very pleased by the sheer power of teamwork, brought by GoodGym. When Ealing eventually gets some rain, the chief gardener hopes to seed some grass in the churchyard and bring the garden back to life with some pleasant greenery.

We will be back at St Mary's churchyard first thing in September. With Steph in charge, the team will attack the infamous northeastern corner of the garden to free it from the remaining weeds. Sign up now!

Next week's Tuesday session: Help women in Acton discover free, inclusive health and fitness opportunities.

More GoodGym this week?

Thursday: Help keep the orchard alive! 🌳 Watering fruit trees at Elthorne Triangle in Hanwell 💦.

Saturday: 🥦 Fun, exercise, food growing 🥔 August Community day at Western Road Urban Garden.

When I think of Blondin Park, I picture a vast space shrouded in darkness, with a tarmac path lit by evenly spaced ground lights like an airport runway. Above it, a bunch of lights hover five or six feet in the air. They move forward with a slight jitter, so they're clearly not drones. What are they? GoodGymers in head torches, running to meet Linda at Blondin Park Pavilion!

For the last three years, our sessions at Blondin Park have mostly been a winter thing. Linda is one of those task owners who doesn't mind us hanging around the park after dark, doesn't mind seeing us through the coldest months of the year and, most importantly, Linda has hot chocolate. Really good hot chocolate.

But today was different. Picture this: the sun setting over the park's community orchard, its rays giving the burnt yellow grass a golden glow. Fallen apples, tree leaves, people's hair, everything catches the light. If only the massive pile of woodchip we're digging into could turn into gold too! But in a way, it already is gold. It's gold for the fruit trees, protecting their roots and providing nutrients. And it's gold for us too, putting our energy into something worthwhile.

We scrape away the dried grass around each tree as far as the drip line. We load woodchip into wheelbarrows, tip it around the trees, then rake it carefully so it doesn't touch the trunks. There are quite a few of us today: some arrive by bike, others walk or run individually, while four of us run together through three parks to get here. Maria, Amy, Jo, Richard, Kristian and Sevan scrape away the hard, sun-baked surface to reveal the earth beneath. Steph Ducat and Giles tirelessly load the wheelbarrows. Scott arrives straight from work, having battled everything TfL could throw at him, determined to make it - and immediately starts wheeling the queued barrows to empty them. Dora takes charge of raking the mulch spread by Scott, and later by Jo and Kash, neatly around each tree.

The team finishes just before dusk. The golden hour is gone. There'll be no golden glow in our hair or long shadows for the group photo. But that's ok. Ten fruit trees now have a solid layer of mulch around them. Great work, team – especially Giles, who joined his first GoodGym session today, and Dora, who came along thanks to Linda's persuasive skills.

What is no different from the winter version of this picture is the teamwork, the smiles, the satisfaction, and the woodchip, of course. And there is hot chocolate. Linda invites us into the pavilion café for refreshments. Only Steph accepts the hot chocolate offer, Richard opts for tea, and everyone else chooses cold drinks on such a warm evening. The head torches will be back soon enough. Until then, let's enjoy the summer sunshine!