There have been a flurry of GoodGym community missions at St Matthew's over the last few months. Maintenance of the ample garden space surrounding the classically designed 18th Century church has driven a swell of community-minded spirit.

A genteel counterpoint to the more sinister sense of dread that may have swirled around these parts in the days of its two most famous former parishioners, Ronnie and Reggie Cray. The twin kings of London's criminal underworld were both commemorated with funerals held here 30 years ago.

With all that well in the past now, Monday gone saw the GoodGym firm return to keep up the momentum of kindness and goodwill, on what was a lovely, warm mid-summer evening. Slightly hazy skies, there was also a swift breeze swaying and creaking through the trees, a little askew from the GoodGym bonhomie in the air.

Whatever spirit was blowing about, walking, running and rolling into task came each member of the crew, most of the team members arriving well ahead of time. Some of the clan sneaking in a little after, excuses and alibis provided, naturally enough, under intense interrogation, with nervous smiles and the odd chuckle.

The initial friendly greetings quickly bubbled over into a lively hubbub of upbeat camaraderie. On the brink of a full-scale turf war, @John, as session lead, stepped up to shush the growing cacophony. Thus formal proceedings began with a calming round of introductions, before running through the carefully laid blueprints for this community heist. There was a reason we were all there. There was a job to be done.

As a marker of their usual thorough preparation, Linda and the St Matthew's family, our mission bosses, had identified four operations where muscle was needed. Furthermore, for our reassurance and comfort, they provided the means to honour three sensible security basics to avoid leaving prints: wear gloves, use tools and stay hydrated. The fulfilment of the latter with ice-cold squash and chocolate rice cakes at the back of the church exceeded hydration to bring us back around replete with sugar-fuelled stamina, after all our exertions.

Whilst busy digesting all the instructions and precautions, local heavy, @Lobo, wheeled his way to join us, dressed in unorthodox but eye-catching pink, lending his support to consolidate our protection racket; i.e. helping everybody find the task, despite our straying from the official meeting point. Rendezvous check noted for our future jobs. Perhaps a tall pink flag is needed?

Altogether, the team converged on the business of the evening, choosing tasks in a seemingly chaotic fashion while somehow remaining focused throughout. We dispersed thus, rather randomly, across the varied church surroundings, a site made up of paving and then lawns, interspersed with paths and a scattering of benches. A territory increasingly familiar to our regular enforcers. One or two seem to know it like the back of their hand.

Now to task: by far the most popular activity was the ongoing battle with the bindweed, a plant pest well-known in this corner of Tower Hamlets, one that had engulfed the poor, innocent circular flowerbed in the area behind the church.

@Jo and @Ilana, seasoned in bindweed disposal from previous experience here and elsewhere across East London, untangled bindweed from the shrubs along the perimeter. @Chloe and @Frankie played a more central role in operations, fighting through to the centre of the flowerbed, cutting back bindweed from the plants in the middle. Frankie, terrific performance for a newcomer. We all hope to see more of you. @Sam and @Kareem stooped and scrambled in the between areas, intercepting knotted threads of the same pervasive vine.

@Ciarán provided bags of welcome enthusiasm for this challenge, along with the actual body bags needed to amass all the severed greenery discarded in crude piles about the immediate area. The bindweed, and any unforeseen collateral damage, needed bagging up and disposing of in an orderly fashion. And there's only really one GoodGymer for a clean-up job like that.

The second major activity was litter-picking, where the assorted items the team gathered up offered the usual insights into the life and crimes played out here. Remnants lazily left behind were the typical mix of mundane and extraordinary, both of which raised eyebrows amongst those who know.

@Chantal and @Nuunuu accumulated sackfuls of contraband cups and cans so efficiently they were asked by a dog walker: had they accidentally collected an expensive dog collar gone astray? Clearly not.

Equally tenacious, @Louise picked up detritus hither and thither, a half-eaten tray of takeaway food here and a small sports jacket there, one inscribed with the name of a highly feared local crew.

@Dan and @Darren collected debris left from the full range of suspicious human activity: eating (forks aplenty), smoking (groups of cigarette butts) and inhaling nitrous oxide gas (a large and heavy canister akin to something incendiary).

The third activity caught @Jack's attention. He dedicated the evening to scraping moss and weeds from between the paving stones, creating a much neater getaway route for visitors to stride or saunter around, however they prefer. Attention to this detail brings out the pride in those who cherish a place of such significance. Credit due for the hard graft that now looks, at a glance, like all is neat and tidy, and really rather well.

Bringing our mission's efforts to a close, current Capos @Lucinda and @Emma introduced us to @Nazifa, who is one of GoodGym's first cohort of Future Leaders. Nazifa will be joining the leadership team to help coordinate sessions over the coming months, thus igniting the next generation of GoodGymmers giving time and care to their local community. One to watch.

And another one amongst our number deserving of a special moment. For Lucinda, we joined our voices together, a bit like an evensong choir, but less tunefully, singing a sketchy but heartfelt rendition of happy birthday to celebrate thus dedicated and dynamic volunteer. Three cheers ring out still for our Lucinda!

FYI, the GoodGym Taskforce is for any volunteer who has attended ten missions and completed a short online training session: set up to do that bit of extra behind-the-scenes work to prepare, deliver and evaluate the GoodGym calendar of task activities we all sign up to each week. If that sounds like something for you, chat to any of the Tower Hamlets Taskforce (listed on each task listing on the website). We will happily give you the lowdown!

But, what of that fourth and final activity? Nettle removal. Overlooked or forgotten? Or maybe a little intimidating and foreboding. My thought, maybe just too tricky and prickly for a warm summer's evening. And yet, perhaps a fresher weekend mob might be better set to take the sting out of St Matthew's gardens...

Be it nettles or other gardening activities that spark your interest in this patch of Tower Hamlets, you can join GoodGym and friends on Saturday morning, where you can help stirring the spirit that started this Goodgym team's week: https://www.goodgym.org/v3/sign-up/let-s-grow-together

We will be with you. And, wherever you are, we will be watching.

On a balmy East London evening, task owner Alex welcomed us by Barge East for what must surely be one of the most seasonally appropriate GoodGym tasks ever. With temperatures hovering around 30 degrees, it almost felt like we were at the seaside rather than in the middle of Stratford/Hackney Wick!

Our mission at Bola Beach Tennis was to help maintain the three beach tennis courts. Over time, the sand gradually migrates to one side thanks to a combination of enthusiastic players and the wind doing its thing, so we spent the evening shovelling, moving and raking sand back into a level playing surface. We also swept around the edges of the courts and returned escaped sand to its rightful home.

Some of the group embraced the beach atmosphere fully and went barefoot, enjoying the rare experience of getting sand between their toes during a Monday evening GoodGym task in central London!

The evening's most memorable challenge, however, came in the form of a gigantic roll of astro turf that needed moving. Despite the combined efforts of almost the entire group (the only exceptions were Jo and Dan, who wisely remained focused on expertly levelling Court 1 ), it refused to budge. We wrestled with the stubborn, immovable object and eventually admitted temporary defeat.

We then spent a lovely half hour after the task relaxing with cold cans of pop from Alex (including sampling the Brazilian favourite Guaraná) and brainstorming increasingly creative solutions to the astro turf problem. Suggestions included: - A "toss-the-caber" style approach (from Lucinda) - Sawing it into smaller chunks (Reymon's practical engineering solution) - Dragging it flat like a giant parachute game (thanks Chloe!) - And finally the consensus view: it probably needs a crane or to be airlifted ?

Watch this space... the saga of the astro turf is (possibly) to be continued...

A huge thank you to everyone who came along and brought beach energy to East London for an evening. Hope you enjoyed your slice of Hackney Wick seaside life — see you all next week! 🌞🏖️💪

A large group of goodgymers old and new joined Ken on a pleasant Monday evening for the usual spot of gardening in the cemetery park. Following the heatwave there was lots to be done. This week’s task was tackling another ‘verdant villain’ called Hogweed. This piggy plant hogs all the nutrients and sunlight and spreads rapidly to the detriment of the surrounding nature. Ken explained the importance of other nearby plants which attract rare species of bee to the cemetery park and are vital to the ecosystem and threatened by the invasive hogweed.

We set to work with our gloves, loppers and secateurs clearing the weed from a triangular patch near the pond. The wheelbarrows filled up as we cut stem after stem, then it was off to empty them on the pile. It was great to see the progress of the patch we cleared in a power hour of Goodgym effort. A huge welcome to our three new Goodgymers; Ana, Joely and Nuunuu. Thanks for all your help and we’d love you to join us again soon!

With the mercury rising to around 33C, anything more than mild gardening exertion would have sent us spinning to the ground. Fortunately, this afternoon, Goodgym Tower Hamlets joined a well-organised and sensibly-paced gardening club at St. Margaret's House, in the Bethnal Green area of the borough.

The overall focus of this community mission: pruning and tidying up plant life overflowing from flowerbeds and creeping over walls. Our achievement: restoring the central garden courtyard and interlinked walkways to an informally neat standard. Nature tamed, but wild enough to introduce a touch of adventure within the relaxing, green backdrop.

Emily, the Operations Manager at St Margaret's House, greeted @Dan and @Emma with welcoming energy, clear instructions, and thoughtful precautions.

Firstly, the latter: Emily offered us sun-cream, presented us each with a foldable stool and demonstrated the cold drinking water fountain within the 'Mulberry House' building. Thus shielded, supported, and hydrated, we could proceed, slowly, to the areas of the garden where the messier and more dominant plants needed our careful, yet timely, interventions.

New bamboo shoots were snipped out with secateurs to avoid them taking over a narrow flowerbed. @Dan teamed up with another garden volunteer on this and had him enquiring about joining GG by the end of the session! An abundant jasmine plant was trimmed to prevent it cascading down into the bin store area (without stopping the sweet fragrance of the remaining stream of flowers wafting over us...). Leaves and debris left scattered by last night's storm were swept up and added to the compost piles (praise be to @Emma for her enthusiasm and imagination with the broom!). A large branch was snapped down to size small enough to lay extra layers upon a stack of logs (a.k.a. the "bug hotel"). Many assorted weeds plus one packet of barbeque beef-flavoured hula hoop crisps s were picked out from amongst shrubs and under the terrace chairs and tables.

And all this activity under the shelter of an effortlessly serene, giant mulberry tree, right in the middle of the St Margaret's House site.

Result of the session: well-maintained outdoor spaces brought back into orderly balance, ensuring this hidden oasis and off-shooting walkways continue to serve the busy St Margaret's House community with well-tended pockets of nature to pass through, mingle with and relax in.

Not just one single house, many buildings come together to make St Margaret's House a whole community arts and wellbeing centre. It fronts onto Old Ford Road, just along from the York Hall Leisure centre. Through its archway lie the hidden depths of its garden grounds, set within an intermingling of halls, offices, a chapel and much more...

The centre offers workshops, hosts exhibitions, organises events and rents space (and runs a vegan café and a shop); all activities promoting the transformatve power of the arts and community connection to boost people's physical and mental health.

The gardening club runs monthly, which is when GG Tower Hamlets has been pitching up to help. A special additional community mission could be lined up before July's session: to help assemble a new bench and stain some existing outdoor furniture (keep your eye out for the details if that sounds like your bag).

That task, and the regular July gardening club, will prepare the site in particular for a memorial event thereafter. The memorial is in honour of a former St Margarets House Finance Director, who died a year ago, and who enjoyed the garden here. So, a chance to contribute to a spruced-up setting for their team to come together in remembrance.

Returning full circle now to the welcoming energy of leader Emily, matched by the other gardening club volunteers, the wider centre's staff, and its visitors, all making their way around the site. Passing along the neatened paths bordered with freshly trimmed and tidied greenery and the wildlife it sustains, the volunteer team received many a nod, a smile and a thank you for our efforts.

At the heart of the main garden is growing St Margaret's special source of cooling shade, cast by its great height and swaying mass of verdant foliage. The huge mulberry tree offers comfort and plenty of natural stimulation for the body and the mind. It is a gently towering, mature specimen producing the darker mulberry fruits, like a cross between a raspberry and a blackberry.

Emily explained how this tree and many mulberry trees were planted around east London in the late seventeenth century, by the Huguenot weavers arriving from France. Silkworms eat exclusively on the leaves of mulberry trees, hence their practical, natural support to their creative silk textile industry.

The fruits on the St Margaret's mulberry tree grow on the higher branches, proving difficult to harvest. But, for now, it still brings plenty of perspective through its stature, and the occasional drop of mulberry rain to keep the St Margaret's community nurtured and intrigued 😀 It felt like a useful boost of inspiration for a revived spirit to rouse this pair of GG volunteers.