On Saturday morning after various parkruns were completed, a growing GoodGym group met at the Teddington bridge path to join in on our monthly conservation work with the lovely Sufiyo and the Friends of Ham Lands group.

We followed the path through the grassland area from the bollards to meet the team. When we had reached the group we were given a quick explanation of the task for the morning. According to the Friends of Ham Lands group, the site is a mix of habitats, mainly woodland, scrub, grassland and wetlands that contain a diversity of plants and animals, including numerous rare species that are hard to find in London. There are meadow wildflowers that attract bees and butterflies. We were cutting back encroaching scrub to maintain sheltered open grassland areas and open woodland which are attractive to butterflies.

Our main task was to clear an area that was overgrown with weeds, brambles and bind weed type vines to open up the area. One of our instructions was not to pull up the thistle-like teasel because it is an important wildflower with medicinal properties and important to the butterflies habitat.

It sounded like just our cup of tea-sel!

Like a swarm of bees or flutter of butterflies, we descended on the overgrowth and had it cleared within the hour. A satisfying job well-done!

In less than an hour, @goodgym helped @richenvironment to clear an area & create a better habitat for butterflies to thrive in 🦋🧤 pic.twitter.com/2DPx11JtBW

— GoodGym Richmond (@GGRichmon) January 12, 2019

There was a workout involving some tug-of-war with stubborn branches that were being held in firmly but we persevered and showed the moss who’s boss! Nik may have been trying to move at rake-ord breaking speed and had to abandon tools to pull by hand! Another challenge was not to get yourself in a twist and some of the branches had attachment issues. While there were patches of teasels huddling together that were easy to move around and avoid, there was one lone teasel standing strong near the center of the clearing and we had to keep reminding each other to leave it with random exclamations of ‘Don’t pull that one!’.

Once the clearing had been created we were able to proudly step back and admire the results of our work with the mound that we’d pulled out and piled up to one side. Next it was time for a quick group photo and it really was time for tea-sel in celebration of Nicky West’s 100th good deed! Huge Congratulations!

And now I leave you with a random tongue twister contributed by Rob:

‘Weasels leave the teasels till the tea sells on the Ham Lands!’

Try saying that five times fast!