On a gloriously sunny Saturday afternoon, five GoodGym-ers (4 experienced in missions; and one new to missions – Anna) met to help Mrs O in Haggerston clear the Ivy from the neighbouring gardens that had engulfed the whole of her back garden, blocking windows, and more importantly access to her boiler (that had to be switched off by the council due to the Ivy causing issues).

After introducing ourselves to Mrs O and making sure we knew where to clear, we collected the secateurs, saw, builders’ bags and gardening gloves left by the council, and made our way through her house into the garden to see the task for the first time. At first glance, it was a bit daunting to even know where to start as it the garden was very hard to access with very little room for the five of us to place ourselves, but Beth managed to find a way in to it and we soon all began to tackle the ivy from all angles. Due to the nature of Ivy winding its’ way through the garden, it was hard to know where it even began, let alone finish! The ivy invasion was tackled with much gusto whilst listening to Patrick’s music and enjoying the warmth of the sun. Little chaos was caused to each other in the process, with the odd timber alerts being called thrown in for good measure! ;)

Halfway into the mission a lot of progress had been made in conquering the ivy with sunlight finally making it’s way back into the garden. There was also space now to start filling up the builders’ bags. Once filled, Axel took great joy in nimbly climbing into the bags and jumping on the ivy branches to make space for more. Once we had filled the bags as much as possible, the next step was to figure out how to get them out of the garden for collection, as the hallway through the house was too narrow and there was no garden gate! The solution was to lift and throw them over the fence into the parking area behind, with half the team on either side of the fence. Anna, followed by Andy, ran off to find the entrance to the parking area and the back garden fence whilst the rest of the team got the bags ready to launch over. In the midst of all of this, one of the neighbours living 2-floors above Mrs O, kindly threw us some ‘Power Mints’ for our efforts! The bags were then lifted and thrown over the garden fence, where they were left at down the side of the house for the council to pick up.

Feeling very satisfied with conquering the ivy invasion, the GoodGym-ers said goodbye to Mrs O in the hope another mission will help clear up the remaining debris in the back garden and focus on tackling the front garden.