It was a cool Saturday morning as 9 GoodGymers (including John who was visiting from Camden) took on the mission of tidying up the front garden of St Christopher’s Fellowship in East Twickenham, a charity which aims to create brighter futures for children and young people in care.

We raided the shed for tools and headed out front. We’ve helped St Christopher’s frequently before so the tasks were familiar - trimming the hedges, litter picking and sweeping up leaves (um, it’s not Autumn yet, what’s going on there?) - but there was additional work this time to tidy up the rubbish and recycling bins which were in a very poor state.

We divided up the tools we had found and got to work. Monika led on litter picking and Chris had the hedge trimmer and got to work on the front hedge. Others grabbed shears to cut back the hedges alongside the driveway and brooms to sweep up the leaves.

The green bins were pretty full and we were struggling for space before Anita - who had taken charge of bins tidy up - managed to compress the contents further, and we also had black bags for the rest.

Reinforcements arrived in the form of Kash and Sevan from Ealing who had helped out at Parkrun beforehand. They got to work on an area of overgrown weeds and leaf matter beside the main building, and tackled a huge creeper growing up the side, Kash even jumping on Sevan’s shoulders to try to reach the highest parts.

Teas and waters were brought out for refreshments but most of the group kept working and by the end we were all proud of our efforts. As usual the staff were enormously grateful and we look forward to helping them out again soon!