A week ago, GoodGym Ealing celebrated winning the Team of the Year award from Southall Community Alliance, the organisation behind the Western Road Urban Garden. This Saturday morning was the perfect opportunity to live up to that title!

We arrived as a team of six, ready to take direction from Ash, who never disappoints when it comes to sharing a clear vision for what we want to achieve. The community day was also a chance to meet Natalie from SCA, who normally leads some of the mid-week sessions at the garden, and Harry, a new volunteer she recruited.

We also welcomed a new GoodGymer, Nadia, who chose Western Road as her first GoodGym experience. Great choice and fantastic work, Nadia!

Ash's vision today was to move the outer border of the veg patches further out to expand the growing space. The job included:

1. Clearing the nettles alongside the hedge along the fence
2. Removing the paving grids and the membrane underneath them
3. Tipping, raking and stomping on soil (donated by the police!) to raise the plot borders
4. Laying and pegging down a Terram membrane (apparently much more effective than the old one)
5. Laying the grids on top of the Terram

We managed to transform the border on two sides of the growing area and made a start on the third, which was a result worthy of the Team of the Year! By the way, Kash brought the trophy to Southall to present it to the wider team helping at WRUG, as this had been 100% a team achievement.

By the end of the session, Ash was pleased to list three outcomes that the dream team had completed:

1. Delineating the new border of the plots
   
2. Making the outer hedge more manageable
   
3. Expanding the food-growing space

It was a lovely day of teamwork and doing something good for the Southall community.

We're at Western Road again very soon – check out the sessions and come along: Community garden day - Tuesday morning and Tuesday afternoon!