For my Friday morning off work, I was looking for a fun mission to guarantee a good start of the day. A familiar beneficiary, Miss G, came up on the GoodGym website, so I set my eyes on the run to East Acton to revisit the garden where I had done missions twice before, with two other GoodGymers.

Miss G was a bit surprised, having discovered that I showed up on my own this time, but I haven't disappointed her, tackling the front garden and quickly tidying up the path to the house. Only a shortage of black bags slowed me down a little bit, but Miss G resolved that promptly, bringing me another roll of sacks in no time.

It was a lovely morning, with just a short episode of rain, a pleasant breeze blowing to cool me down on my double 5.5km run, and a huge amount of thistles successfully removed from Miss G's front garden.

"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!