On a cloudy Saturday morning, Anna from Friends of Grove Farm welcomed three GoodGymers: Madhan and Kash from GoodGym Ealing and Hounslow's Emily to a monthly conservation day at Grove Farm Nature Reserve.

The task was what GoodGymers like Emily and Kash like the most: bramble bashing ✂️🪓💥! Madhan was new to that skill but, after brief training and some practice, he was a pro at wielding the shears and exterminating invasive plants!

Why are the brambles invaders? - you may ask. They block the sunlight to the woodland floor and prevent the beautiful wood anemones from flowering in the spring. Fun fact: when Kash first heard "wood anemones", she could only interpret the sound as "wooden enemies" - that's a better alias for the villainous brambles!

GoodGymers were warmly welcomed by the community working at the nature reserve today - not only the Friends of Grove Farm but also guests from LAGER Can and Ealing Wildlife Group.

We found out about plants called wild service trees 🌳 which are rare native trees, indicating that the site where they grow was once an ancient woodland. We saw one of those VIP trees - it had its own plaque and looked very special, wow!

At the end of the session, every GoodGymer was awarded an honour to plant a tree at the Grove Farm. Because Emily had to make a move soon, Madhan became a father of not one but two little trees! 🌱🌱

We were shocked when Anna told us that Ealing Council is planning to remove the protective status of Metropolitan Open Land from Grove Farm. It is a designation that prevents green areas from being built on. There is a petition to oppose the plan and protect Grove Farm reserve from being lost forever - some of us already signed it - takes less than 5 minutes to do!

We hope Grove Farm will remain intact as a wild place offering relief from the hustle and bustle of city life and we are looking forward to another conservation day to help the place thrive.

Last night was a masterclass in speed volunteering thanks to some very inhospitable conditions!

Just as we met for our Wednesday group run we were greeted with threatening skies and it wasn't too long before the downpour started good and proper. Undeterred we did our warm up and ran down to Cavendish school where we have been helping create a sustainable learning area for the children.

By the time we got there we were already sodden, but we grabbed tools and cracked on with our task for the evening. The space is being slowly transformed from an overgrown tangle of weeds and unwanted bushes and we have been lending a hand over the months getting it into shape. Previous sessions have seen us create a pathway, hack down the waist-high undergrowth, dig over the soil and clear the pond area. The school now want to install composters to make use of the leaves that are clogging up the place, so we got cracking raking, stacking and collecting the remaining leaves to create mulch.

After a good hard session we were quickly getting increasingly soggy and the rain was showing no signs of stopping so we put away our tools and made a run for the safety and warmth of the town hall. It was a relief to make it back but we didn't get too comfortable, immediately starting on the full body strength and conditioning workout. If that wasn't tough enough, the finisher was a wall sit that everybody smashed, holding the tough position for a whole two minutes. If that wasn't enough there was even a singalong to distract from the pain!

Amazing work in tough circumstances last night team, well done! Next week I'm hoping for a balmy Wednesday evening for our trip to help out at the Chiswick House community kitchen garden. Have a great week, GG!