GoodGym Ealing's first visit to Our Lady of the Visitation Primary School in Greenford revealed a huge space behind the building that most schools would be envious of, with play areas and green space. They were part of a year long trial scheme with Sustainability Managers for Schools to improve their environmental footprint. Huge progress had already been made, with the school recently being awarded Distinction status as a Green School. There was more still to do and the children wanted to reclaim an overgrown wasteland to create a small nature reserve, which is where GoodGym came in.

Task owner Rachel, along with children, parents and staff, had already made a lot of progress in the space. That included removing weeds from the pond, which had started to attract newts, frogs and dragonflies that weren't there before. There was still a big list of work to do, including:

• Getting blanket weed out of the pond
• Planting some pond flowers
• Helping to create a path
• Hanging bird boxes
• ...and a lot more

With only 3 GoodGymers at the task, Rachel was asked "what can GoodGymers do in 2 hours for you that others can't?" and the answer was to clear brambles shoots and stalks from the path and mark it out with logs. A classic GoodGym task. Let the digging commence!

For 90 minutes there was digging of brambles, pulling of roots and the occasional cursing following stings and scratches. One particularly large bramble cluster needed Kash, Sevan and Steph to all take turns to dig it out, with Steph eventually being victorious. Steph though he'd struck gold when he found roots that looked like truffles, but the group didn't need pigs to work out that they weren't the real thing, so back to the day job Steph. Kash helped Rachel move logs to mark out the path and by the end of the task, the nature reserve was ready to get a delivery of wood chip to spread along the bramble-free walkway.

And Rachel's view?

"You've done a great job at clearing out a lot of sh!t"

We'll take that complement and we'll be back for more fun tasks at Our Lady of the Visitation school soon.