9 GoodGym members joined several local volunteers from St Mary Magdalene Church on a beautifully sunny Saturday morning in central Richmond to start work on restoring the setting to the Grade II listed War Memorial in the church graveyard.

Ken was running the task and briefed us on cutting down the 6 cypress trees that were obscuring and threatening the monument. These were recently small clipped shrubs but will soon grow over 20m tall and were already over 2.5m tall having grown a metre in the past year alone. There was a risk that these would undermine the foundations to the Memorial and were already obscuring the words.

In 15 minutes we had cut all the cypress down and thought we were done. But no, the roots all need to come out and we needed to cut all the piles of branches into small bits to fit into a 1 ton dumpy bag for garden waste composting. That was the hard part! The group got stuck in though, with Peter taking on the fearsome roots with help from Chris, Sofia (on her first mission!) and Sam (and the Vicar and one of her team!) while most others got on with chopping up the branches, occasionally jumping in the bag to pack them down.

It was a great task and we will be returning in late October to replant with a range of seasonal perennials and flowers in time for Remembrance Day - sign up here! https://www.goodgym.org/v3/sessions/restoration-of-the-war-memorial-and-gardens-at-st-mary-magdelen-92cf9788-22bf-4f39-82f9-cc3f412b942b