After giving our arms a solid workout gardening at HANGOT, a number of GoodGymers decided it was only right to give our legs some exercise too with a post-task social at the Hanwell Hootie.

First stop was Momentum Coffee, where we refuelled before crossing the road to Hanwell Clock Tower to catch some of the afternoon’s buskers. The line-up did not disappoint, featuring a solo singer-songwriter and one of Hanwell’s finest musical institutions... the 40-piece Hanwell Ukulele Group (HUG).

From there, the group split off to explore the many artists performing across Hanwell’s pubs and outdoor venues… but somehow, all roads led back to the main stage at the viaduct meadow.

A number of GoodGymers had volunteered to help with the Hootie set-up and pack-down, and were kindly rewarded by the Hootie team with festival t-shirts and queue-skipping wristbands - a very welcome perk given the popularity of this brilliant volunteer-run free music festival!

Perhaps the best part of the afternoon was bumping into GoodGymers all over Hanwell. A wonderful reminder of the fabulous community spirit of the Hootie and GoodGym!

GoodGym's first visit to Blackberry Corner since October showed a huge transformation. Through spring, things had sprung. Mostly weeds around the fruit trees. HANGOT's Orchard Love day for May looked to clear space around the trees so that they could feed off all of the precious sunlight and water that hit the orchard.

HANGOTers scythed the paths first, with everyone staying out of the way of the swishing blades. Once they'd passed, GoodGymers got rolling with their shears, quickly chopping 2 metre wide circles around the tree trunks. Nettles, grass, cleavers and hemlock were wiped out with each snip. The animal lovers in the group found lots of ladybirds, spiders and snails, which they moved to safety before removing the weeds that they'd been sitting on. Rakers followed the choppers, moving the cuttings into large piles to dry out.

After the trees were given some breathing room, the team moved onto cutting back a large overgrown area at the far side of the orchard and also digging out burdock and hemlock, which needed regular and sustained removal to eventually kill them.

The tasks were completed quickly thanks to a lot of volunteers and a desire to get off to today's Hanwell Hootie music festival. A couple of the ladybirds had the same idea. Rather than searching for a new home in the orchard, they decided to hitchhike on a bag to go on a journey of musical discovery via a coffee stop.

"Who is it?" - Miss O
"Kash and Sevan from GoodGym. We're here to help you declutter" - Sevan

The door opened and Miss O looked at the pair

"I've voted already" - Miss O
"No we're here to help with your decluttering" - Sevan

It was local election day and Kash's red GoodGym jacket was making an unintentional political statement. Once Miss O was convinced that the GoodGymers weren't canvassing, she let them inside and explained her problem. A year ago her kitchen had been replaced and in the process, she'd lost 2 cupboards, so all those items were in black bags on the living room floor. Miss O needed help to get rid of 2 cupboards worth of things, mostly large pots and pans as she now lived alone, and needed help with this as she was visually impaired

Initially Miss O expected the first GoodGym mission to be a meet & greet. With a little persuasion, Kash convinced her that it was the perfect time to jump into action and start discarding things.

Kash and Sevan found all manner of unusual kitchen devices in the black bags, with Kash feeling like it was a quiz that she'd never been taught the answers to and Sevan getting a little over half marks. There were the usual pots and pans, from large to small. There were rice cookers from large to small and pressure cookers too. Miss O explained that as her family had moved away, she'd bought smaller versions of each tool and still had them all. Then came:

• multiple bottle openers
• a nutmeg grater
• a butter baller
• a drinks can sealer
• a citrus zester
• a grill pan handle
• a toffee hammer
• many, many tea eggs
• and lots of other bits and bobs

Miss O still had a great memory and could identify every item and component by sight or by touch. As items were identified, they went from their original black bags into a range of others, for plastics, for mugs, for pots and pans and so on. Each had a different purpose. The rice cookers and pressure cookers were keepers to give to friends and family, while a black bag full of mugs was prepped for donation. Four of the bags containing electricals, pots and meat mincers were destined to go to discard pile outside, which was a great first step.

Do you remember the story from the most recent session at Popesfield Allotments, where I noted that GoodGym Ealing hadn't visited Cultivate London's plant nursery for two years? Well, such a gap didn't happen this time! Our team was back within three weeks since the April 2026 session, as we had left a job unfinished, and we don't like that.

So, what do we like? The sound of weeds' roots being seamlessly pulled through a membrane, oh yes! This Tuesday evening task was filled with satisfying ambient noises and a sense of achievement.

Conor, Sevan, Steph Ducat and Kash ran from Ealing Broadway to meet another runner - Harvey, cyclist James and walker Anna.

Anna arrived for her first GoodGym session after being recruited by our mutual friend from LAGER Can - what a brilliant turn of events! Anna likes a good litter pick, but nothing beats a green task closer to nature. She arrived ready with small weeding tools and even offered others her spare gloves, which astonished the regulars - usually it's the other way around with the newbies! Neither gloves nor tools were really necessary as the weeds were extremely easy to pull by hand, and that was an utterly satisfying sensation.

With a team of seven and an hour of pulling, sweeping, bagging and pallet-lifting, we finished clearing the entire membrane area, filling two tonne bags with garden waste. Minus a few holes (made by weeds, not us!), the membrane looked like new.

"You could eat dinner from that!" - Harvey.
"Is it dinner time?"

Next Tuesday, we'll have more gardening to do as we'll be helping gardener Cliff maintain the peaceful space for church-goers and residents of South Ealing at St Mary's churchyard. Sign up now!

Friends of Waterman’s Park had a grand vision. Forget boring planters or a generic wildflower meadow. Enter the Dragon... path! The Green Dragon Path was going to be planted in a wildflower area, currently overtaken by grass. The creative vision came with a design on paper - what better way to attract adventurers than a map to a dragon’s treasure waiting to be uncovered!

Maria walked all the way from Hackney to Brentford to be part of this grand community endeavour, created in partnership with Green Dragon Primary School (how cool is that for a school name!). Amy, although new to GoodGym and West London, already had a couple of local volunteering tasks under her belt and couldn’t miss this one, so she cycled to Waterman’s Park too. Finally, Sevan and Kash - already having found some dragon figurines in the morning and gone on a Hobbit-style quest at noon - were up for anything that involved dragons and magic. All four GoodGymers were exactly where they needed to be.

After a bit of anticipation - while the visionary lead explained the approach, the mower was connected, the right tools arrived, and parents with children joined the effort to bring the dragon to life - everyone got to planting.

The soil was dry and hard, full of rocks and bricks, and it wasn’t easy at all to dig into, even for the smallest flowers. Luckily, the more powerful tools soon arrived and changed the course of the session. Sevan and Kash, already familiar with mattocks and pickaxes, were delighted to see the right tools to break through the impenetrable ground. One of the volunteers, Seyed - an embodiment of skill and strength - took mattocking to the next level, helping others dig holes and unearthing an impressive block of concrete, which later found its resting place in the Thames.

Maria and Amy, initially reluctant to admit their undiscovered love for hacking into the ground with a mattock - saying things like “You’re the strong one, you do it” or “I prefer a smaller, more gentle tool” - quickly changed their minds once they gave it a go. The mattock and pickaxe proved irresistible, and soon the pair were sending tremors through the soil that seemed to awaken the sleeping dragon. The mystical creature came to life, with flowers and spiky ornamental grasses shaping its winding body, head, and fishy tail. What a wonderful creation for the community it was!

One of the greatest quests in Middlesex (not to be confused with Middle-earth) began with the Wizard Sevan the Wise and Kash the Hobbit knocking at Mrs L's door in Hanwell. When a wizard knocks on your door, you don't quite know what to expect, and Mrs L seemed rightfully confused at the sight of the quite otherworldly-looking pair. Sevan explained that they had come to perform a bit of garden wizardry, and Mrs L let them walk through her house into the back garden.

In the backyard, there were weeds to take out from beds and paving, leaves to sweep, and trees and other plants to trim. There was plenty to be done, but only a modest collection of tools to be found in the shed: a children-sized spade, broken loppers and a small fork without a handle. Surely, fantasy heroes could work with that. A more pressing subject, though, was the back gate.

Mrs L insisted there was only one way the garden waste should leave the garden: through the back gate. The problem was that the gate would only open a foot or so, blocked by bulging paving beneath it. On the other side, fly-tipped rubbish had piled up into a solid barrier, blocking the way as if the garden had quietly decided that no one shall pass. No one, that is, except a hobbit.

Who could better serve as the expedition’s “burglar” than Kash - perhaps the closest thing to a real hobbit you could find in Ealing. Kash squeezed through the gate (not an easy feat!) and found herself in a heavily littered green tunnel. Beneath her feet lay fly-tipped bundles of branches, above her, a canopy of overgrown ivy. Kash used her most unlikely but essential power - her short stature - to slip through where others couldn’t. She pushed past a cluster of buckets and pots and soon reached a fork in the alleyway. The left-hand path had been cleared of overgrowth, and through it she could already see the bars of an exit gate at the far end. The right-hand side, by contrast, looked like an impenetrable thicket of brambles. Kash had overheard Mrs L's neighbours mention nettles, foxholes, barbed wire, and all manner of nastiness beyond it - a route no one would reasonably attempt.

Kash tried the left-hand route first, Mrs L's key in hand, but the lock refused to yield. No match. So she turned back. What else could she do? Armed with broken loppers, she carved a narrow path through the brambles on the right-hand side exit, inch by inch, until she reached yet another gate. This time, the key turned. The lock was open. And just like that, the path to the street was revealed.

Meanwhile, back in the garden…

Sevan the Wise, alongside the kind neighbours, had been engaged in a different kind of quest: one of persuasion. With calm words and practical reasoning, they revealed to Mrs L a truth long overlooked. There was, in fact, a far simpler way for the green waste to disappear from the back garden: through the house.

And so, when Kash returned triumphant from her journey - having gone there and back again - the adventurers were granted passage through the house, to dispose of the trimmings into a green bin kindly lent by one of the neighbours. The neighbour also equipped them with a broom and a shovel, which made it possible to sweep the weeds that Sevan had ruthlessly obliterated from the paving with a hoe.

A heroic quest. A path revealed. And, ultimately… entirely unnecessary. Still, every great story needs its hobbit.