13 GoodGymers put their Saturday morning moat-ivation to good use, clearing up the restored historical moat at Fulham Palace Gardens

Having upgraded her mode of transport from walking with a wheelbarrow to a ride-on tractor, Fulham Palace Trust’s head gardener Lucy, met with GoodGym Hammersmith and Fulham’s small red army.

Lucy gave a brief history of the moat, which was restored a decade ago, to represent part of the Palace’s original medieval moat. The moat was nearly 1.4km in length and was the largest domestic moat in Medieval England. It is host to a really diverse and important wildflower area (one of the most diverse in north London!) and botanists have recently discovered many rare insects and plant species such as bascum nigrum and varieties of wild mint growing within it.

However, encouraging such wildflower meadows requires lots of hard work - keeping the soil-enriching turf at bay, and stopping that pesky bindweed in its tracks! As the wildflowers had now dropped their seeds, it was time for the GoodGymers to get rid of the dead plants, brambles and bindweed.

Moaty McMoatFace: the return!

Due to reseeding on the far end of the moat after our last weed-clearing session, we entered the moat by balancing on a collapsible stool, followed by a steep step ladder or slide down the bank…this challenge wasn't enough to put off our intrepid GoodGymers though!

Armed with gloves, rakes, fancy secateurs (they’re telescopic don’t you know!), Bethan, Beth, Katie, Lucy, Ben, Katie, Andrew, Ron, Analiese, Morag, Steve, Amy and Tatjana got to work cutting down the vegetation on the moat banks. Some bold members like Chris, Andrew and Bethan scaled the steep slopes of the moat while the others raked and bagged up piles of old weeds and flowers in the big industrial sized bags, and once full they were loaded onto the tractor's trailer to be taken away and composted.

Bound to break a new record

Gardener Lucy shared her exasperation at the vast amounts of bindweed taking over the moat - but in true GoodGym fashion, we saw this as an opportunity for fun and games - and Lucy was bound to make a competition of it! However, surprisingly it wasn't the 'slightly competitive' Lucy who began the game of 'who can find the longest bindweed?', but instead Andrew who lofted his long snake-like bindweed find above his head. Lucy may have thought she had won the game when she found the longest bindweed at around 5 metres, however, Beth smugly emerged with her own bindweed beast, measuring a whopping 7 metres (that’s about 7 bitesized Beths!).

Taking a rake!

After mastering the left-handed rake, no easy feat for any right-hander, Ben decided to descend the moat in style - by sliding down on his derriere! Was he trying to garnish attention, or just make Katie feel comparatively less clumsy? 🤔 Whatever the answer, someone get that boy a drawbridge for next time!

Moat puns aside....they're not re-moat-ly funny....it was wonderful to welcome Morag and Stephen from across the river at GoodGym Wandsworth, and our newest member Ron to our group. Great to meet you all, hope we haven't scared you off or led you down a bind-alley today!