Anita and Iram dropped in to join Auberon, Dani, and the Cultivate London team to help bring a splash of colour to the green spaces around Ealing Hospital. Anita arrived first, while Iram joined later, so the pair passed each other like ships in the daylight! Cultivate London supplied some very fetching hi-vis jackets and all the tools we needed to get planting.

Cultivate London is a charity that provides horticultural services using sustainable, organic and biodiverse methods. They work with communities, businesses and local government to create and maintain enjoyable and sustainable urban green spaces and give local people the opportunity to learn and engage in food growing. This session was in partnership with London North West Healthcare Charity.

The team introduced us to the “lasagne technique” which involved layering different bulbs in the soil like lasagne sheets. A good deep hole was dug, and layers of tulips and crocuses were stacked between layers of ~~sauce~~ soil before being firmly stomped down to deter the local squirrel population. The squirrels were keeping a watchful eye from the sidelines as they planned their next raid for a tasty treat!

There’s still plenty to do, so we’ll likely be back to lend a hand again soon. It was a brilliant session full of teamwork, fresh air and the promise of a colourful spring around Ealing Hospital.

The last group run of August 2025 took GoodGym runners Sevan, Harvey, Freya and Steph Ducat to South Acton in a pursuit of perfection in the art of leaf mulch making. At Berrymede School, they met Kash and Chris, and, of course, Romina from Cultivate London, who would guide them in preparing the finest 2024 leaf compost, continuing their work started in July.

Last year's leaves were well-marinated: dark, moist and rich - easy to tell apart from golden, crispy 2025 leaves that already started falling onto the schoolyard. We had to do our best to finish the 2024 batch before it got contaminated by this season's additions. Chris, Freya, Sevan and Kash positioned themselves at the leaves deposit to dig out the damp organic gold. The lowest layers already had some growth in them. The GoodGymers found peculiar white sprouts and even apples: one edible (presumably, as no one actually tried it), and another - an Apple device! Cultivate London charity could grow rich by growing more iPhones rather than selling leaf mulch to raise funds!

Harvey, in breaks from shovelling leaves, was driving the trolley with half-full tonne bags to Bay 2024, where Steph was performing leaf stomping: an ancient tradition of treading the mulch by feet to release the juices and initiate fermentation. As the time went on, the half-full bags in the bay, topped up with Harvey's deliveries and compressed by Steph, grew fatter and denser. Romina was delighted to see what outstanding results a small team could achieve and gave the GoodGymers a round of high-fives.

Next week, our Tuesday session will take place near Ealing Broadway. We will be pruning and watering at the much-loved Lammas Orchard. Sign up now to join us!

Mid-August Tuesday night group run to Acton’s Wildflower Trail was a sequel to a similar session in July. Another heatwave prompted Romina from horticultural charity Cultivate London to deploy the GoodGymers for another treasure hunt involving finding hand tools and watering cans - with a twist! This time, the task was extended to sowing wildflower seeds. What would the seed mix look like? How would the GoodGymers sow them?

Kash cheated the system by walking straight to South Acton early and unintentionally catching Romina before she left the Cultivate HQ. Kash received instructions directly from Romina and even remembered some of the plants from the seed mix: hollyhock, calendula, poppy, and sweet pea.

Steph and Sevan ran from Ealing Broadway to meet Kash and Gaby at the cutest little shed ever: the Acton BID's self-service station at the Wildflower Trail. Kash had already filled two watering cans at the tank and was working on the last one - rightly so, as everyone found out that filling the can takes time.

Gaby, Steph, and Sevan set off to water twelve trees - some more obvious than others - in six wildflower beds. Waiting for the water to fill the cans offered an opportunity for lively water cooler conversations, but also for a call to action: the GoodGymers don’t like standing still with nothing to do, so they decided to take turns at spot litter picking while waiting. Kash, in the meantime, started weeding the bed with wild hedging.

The team used up all the water (and most of the task time) to come to the rescue of the thirsty trees. Before leaving the last five minutes for a weeding blitz, each GoodGymer had a go at sowing the seeds of love (according to Steph and Tears for Fears) or at the Wildflower Trail Mix (according to Sevan), with a crunchy insect insert. With sowing completed, the GoodGymers finished filling three Greener Ealing bags with weeds and carried them to the Cultivate HQ. Another rescue mission at Wildflower Trail completed!

Next week we are supporting the William Hobbayne charity with the maintenance of their outdoor space - sign up now!. In two weeks, we are back in Acton to work with Cultivate London collect leaves from the local school grounds.

Three Ealing GoodGymers: Harvey, Sevan and Kash, and a guest from Hounslow, Maxime, met Romina from Cultivate London at the back of Berrymede School. For the Ealing crew, it was a nostalgic visit, evoking memories of the earthy, woody scent of wet leaves that had been so frequently and diligently collected in previous years by GoodGymers. But something was off. It was bright and warm - unlike all the previous occasions when our team was involved in harvesting that crumbly, nutrient-rich gold from under the trees on damp and dark winter Tuesday nights.

Romina showed us three bays with leaves turning into compost, which the Cultivate charity would sell to maintain their operations. Like wine aging in oak barrels, the chemistry was turning the autumn leaves from past years into something greater. Bay 2022 contained Cultivate's finest blend by date: from leaves collected over a record of four GoodGym Ealing sessions in one season (and probably some Hounslow tasks too!). That batch was now on sale. Bay 2023 had leaves mellowing gracefully, but not mature enough yet to hit the shelves. Bay 2024 was empty. We missed the harvest last winter, and the 2024 leaves, swept under a tree, were patiently waiting for GoodGym attention. That was our task for the evening - catching up with the 2024 leaf collection.

The start felt slow. First, we had to move out of the way a layer of low-quality tree waste containing undesirable sticks to get to the real, mulchy stuff. Secondly, we brought tools we were not sure whether were the best choice. Thirdly, we had to figure out a system. We tried buckets, shovels and forks to fill large bags with leaves in an efficient way. Then we moved the bags on a trolley and hauled them into Bay 2024. We left Romina with 2.5 bags full of leaves and Maxime with the secret recipe on how to collect the leaves best. We were sure that he would bring that knowledge to next day's Hounslow session at the same location.

On a mild summer evening, five GoodGymers ran 2 miles from Ealing Broadway to South Acton for a wildflower-themed scavenger hunt in an industrial area. Ayesha, Freya, Sevan, Steph and Kash had to crack a few puzzles to support Cultivate London charity in maintaining planters that had been established in collaboration with the Acton Business Improvement District. Acton BID is a not-for-profit company with a vision to make the area cleaner, safer, and more welcoming for visitors while supporting local businesses.

The BID planters, although dubbed "the Wildflower Trail", were getting a bit too wild in the summer, and Romina from Cultivate suggested they could do with a little tidy-up. The recent hot days, despite a brief rainfall last night, were not easy on the thirsty young trees, so that was another subject to tackle.

Tonight's challenge included:

1) Locating trowels cleverly hidden somewhere in Acton
2) Locating the cutest mini-shed ever

"It doesn't look like a tool shed... it looks like a birdhouse!" - Freya.
"It looks like a grandfather clock!" - Sevan.

3) Cracking a lockbox code
4) Opening a tricky padlock

(if that sounds like your recent Airbnb holiday, read on - it's a different kind of game!)

5) Distributing water from a tank fairly among trees on the wildflower trail
6) Finding pieces of litter scattered around the planters and catching them all
7) Judging what's a weed to pull out and what's a wildflower worth keeping (Romina has provided us with clues on this one)
8) Throwing two green waste bags over a fence

We've completed all the puzzles, leaving the Wildflower Trail colourful (as we spared a lot of pretty flowering plants) and tidy.

"Such a great result, thanks so much! You are brilliant guys! Well done. I am sure your help will go a long way" - Romina.

Cultivate had a big group of volunteers again this morning at Ealing Hospital, with plenty of corporate volunteers, locals, hospital staff and GoodGymers. Carrying on from last week's session, there were 2 areas to work on:

1. Raking, leveling and sowing the next set of flower beds, close to the staff car park
2. Fixing up the bird deterrents from last week's completed flower beds

Today's GoodGymers split to opposite ends of the site, with Rebekah near the entrance, keen to repair the shiny, fluttery tapes that she and others had attached last week to scare birds away from their newly sown seeds. Chris and Sevan went to prepare the new beds by leveling the soil and removing any large things that shouldn't be there.

The shiny streamers had drooped to the ground since they were placed a week ago. The wind had blown them around and they had slowly slipped down their canes, so instead of flying over the flower beds, birds were doing that instead. Rebekah tied the strands together to make a complicated spider's web that should stay put, working her way along the existing beds.

On the opposite side of the car park, Chris and Sevan were moving soil and searching for big rocks, making Sevan think of Primal Scream for some reason. It was mostly bricks that they unearthed, with Chris declaring that he'd discovered a small meteorite too. The rocks were taken out and by midday, the soil was raked and almost ready for planting by the afternoon seed crew.

Get your rocks out, get your rocks out, honey
Rake it now, now, get'em out downtown

🤷