Hazel and James fought the bramble monster and won on Monday evening, following up the sterling work done by GoodGym runners last weekend to help Make Mrs R’s Garden Great Again.

The challenge

Mrs R's spacious garden needed a little more TLC after a GoodGym visit the previous weekend. A whole lot of weeds and brambles had already been cleared, but there was still a lot to do to get this generous garden space looking great.

Up and at them (brambles)

Excellent quality tools in hand, we got to work with our weapons of choice. Hazel started with the large clipper things while James went to work with the forky pronged thing. Apologies if the language is too technical here.

As we tackled the task, tools were swapped, dropped in favour of hand-to-bramble combat, picked up again, used imaginatively, imagined usefully, wielded greedily against unwieldy weedies, and just generally appreciated as being really nice tools.

Down with overgrowth

It was the rare gardening task when there was no hesitation about which were plants and which were weeds. It was all weed and it all had to go. Where did it have to go? Into a luxury pile, of course.

From humble beginnings our discarded weed pile grew until it towered above us, rivalling the tall apartment blocks to the east, and surely visible from Earth orbit by the end of our task. We apologise to Lambeth council for this low-flying aircraft risk.

Those brambles had no chance

We worked hard and got a lot done. It was very satisfying to stand back at the end and see what a difference we'd made. We hope Mrs R is very happy with her garden, as it is a great space with a lot of potential.

What a great way to spend a mild Monday evening. Mission squad, over and out!