What can four GoodGymers do on Saturday morning at Cultivate's site near Acton Town? Would it be shovelling compost or bagging more leaves? None of that - today's task turned out to be much more exciting than any of us anticipated!

Madhan was already waiting in front of Plant Nursery when everyone else suddenly appeared at once. Bran cycled today to her second GoodGym community mission and Sevan and Kash ran to the task after a 9 am social run in Ealing parks. Romina from Cultivate showed up at the same time to open the gate. Seeing a couple of new faces, she gave us a brief about Cultivate's work and the current Plant Nursery location which is supposed to move next door in the future.

Romina pointed us to the corner of the site where rose an imposing mound that looked like a plant cemetery. The bottom of the tall and vast pile of dead plants was squashed by gravity and rain into soil and compost, and the top was covered in a variety of shrubs and tree parts collected over the years from allotments.

Our job was to climb the heap and chuck the branches, twigs and trees into a pile at the ground level where the bulky garden waste would meet its final destiny delivered by Greener Ealing. The waste company would use their magic machine to turn the woody waste into woodchips. The operation wouldn't happen until March as Greener Ealing was still busy digesting the Christmas trees - some of them collected from the streets by GoodGym!

It wasn't the first time Sevan and Kash were asked to do bush-chucking. For Branwen and Madhan the task was a new challenge but they were true naturals in the battle with plant zombies that ensued!

Branwen got herself busy sourcing the material to be thrown out of the pile: uncovering new branches, cutting the ivy and chopping off large tree branches. Sevan was mostly in the middle of the chain, passing the branches forward to the "throwers" and warning them about spikes - there was a surprising amount of pointy, prickly and scratchy plant parts involved, so we had to be very careful! Sevan had his moment of glory when he - with a bit of help from Madhan - uprooted a tree.

Madhan and Kash were "throwers". They positioned themselves at the end of the human chain, by the edge of the dead plant island. They had the most exciting job of chucking everything off-board into the sea of shrubs and branches. Luckily, they didn't end up having to wear pirate-style eye patches! Dealing with sharp twigs and thorns was tricky but the throwers were cautious to not accidentally stick anything in each other's eyes.

Although the mission was not a litter pick, the GoodGym team had some notable findings: Branwen found a couple of bamboo sticks that could be saved and reused as support for pot plants and Madhan uncovered parts to construct the Angry Birds catapult! The plant grave mound, despite being now deprived by us of its thorny, woody crown, still stands tall and hides many secrets to uncover. Maybe another expedition of GoodGymers in the future will come back with new treasures and stories to tell?