This week we returned to the Independent Newham Users' Forum (INUF), the user-led mental health charity based at Ithaca House in Stratford. INUF's community hub hosts drop-ins, yoga, art, dance and all sorts of wellbeing sessions, and the garden provides a calm, therapeutic space for everyone who uses it — or at least it will do, once we've been able to help get it back into shape.

A brilliant turnout of GoodGymers arrived to find that the back of the garden had been making the most of the summer sun. Brambles scrambling over the walls, buddleia with ambitions of becoming a tree, and nettles claiming a fair amount of territory. This week's mission: get right to the back of it all and take the space back.

We got stuck into weeding, pruning, sawing and bagging. Highlights included:

• Taming the buddleia and blackberry brambles along the boundary wall
• Giving the olive tree a much-needed haircut, with some impressive saw work on the lower branches
• Digging out weeds by the root — one heroic root ball very deserving of the photo
• Cutting back the nettles and undergrowth around the compost bins so they're actually reachable again
• Filling an impressive fleet of black bags with green waste

Special shout outs this week: to Lucinda for some cross-border GoodGymming — thanks for lending Newham your trowel skills! And it was lovely to see Steven and Bianca back at the garden — clearly the assorted weeds didn't put them off last time.

By the end of the evening the transformation was plain to see: the back of the garden went from a bit of a jungle to a clearer, open space, with a liberated olive tree and more room for the peaceful, welcoming garden INUF's community deserves.

Thanks to Pat at INUF for having us — we'll schedule a return for September - and a huge thank you to everyone who came along. These sessions can only happen if we have INUF volunteers (sorry), so please keep coming back!