It was not brambles, ivy or litter that were the main nuisance at Grove Farm today. Friends of Grove Farm had another problem to fix: a leaking pond! A pool of water at the bottom of the park's hill was surrounded by clay borders and one of the walls was reinforced with a fallen willow. Unfortunately, the dead tree fortified by clay was not doing its job to keep the water in. We don't know if the Paradise Fields beaver engineers were consulted about building a dam, but the GoodGym Ealing plumbing team got there first!

Three Friends of Grove Farm: Anna, Mike and Olena were joined on Saturday by a strong team of six GoodGymers. The job was to excavate some clay, and then fill the gaps that were causing the leak. We had an archaeologist and an engineer (a network engineer to be specific) on the team, which boosted our confidence about digging and constructing things. One team: Sevan, Simon, Mehmet and Mike were sent to mine for clay at the other part of the park, while the rest stayed at the pond. Gaby and Kash were digging the clay locally, eroding the top of existing walls that did not have to be as high, and Eliz, Anna and Olena did most of the construction work, patching the leaky pond barrier.

To make sure that the clay is properly compacted, our builders were performing a flagship GoodGym exercise - muddy mountain climbers (see how Eliz did it!). That routine was not only a perfect workout for the legs and core but also for nature. Which other gym has that on their offer?

The last ten minutes of the task was spent on cleaning the tools, followed by a short excursion to the wood anemone location. Cutting back all the brambles in that area in the winter paid off - we were dazzled by a wonderful carpet of white flowers against the greenery of the woodlands!

Wood anemones will be still flowering in the next two weeks, so if you are keen to see their beauty, join Friends of Grove Farm for creating habitats for slow worms next week or the conservation day in April.

Steph, Sevan and Kash felt that spring is on its way as they ran past first daffodils showing up on Ealing's Green spaces. The sky didn't clear yet, but the nighttime rain has stopped, leaving plenty of puddles to jump over. The soggy paths of Grove Farm felt like a proper cross-country course, with the slip hazards and the artistic mud splatters they painted on GoodGymers' knee-high socks.

Friends of Grove Farm led our trio through a meadow to the local equivalent of a bamboo forest: a dogwood grove. That grove was the subject of today's task: making the dogwood history! After the winter months focused on cutting down brambles to help wood anemones thrive in the spring, this Saturday our team was about to cut the dogwood trees down.

While Mike and Livio set off to clear the brambles off manholes, the GoodGymers and Portia employed loppers to cut down dogwood. Anna was slowly carrying the chopped-down trees away to build sort of a dead hedge on the top of a steep ravine surrounding the brook. Some of the dogwood plants, although thin, were several metres high, so it did seem appropriate to shout "timber!" occasionally.

With all the enthusiasm surrounding the chopping activity, we thought we should have asked for the context.

"Why are we actually removing the dogwood?"
*"Dogwood grows very vigorously and it just takes over. We left this one for quite a long and now it has grown very tall" - Anna.

The objective was to prevent dogwood from spreading. We were also creating an opening near the existing meadow.

We removed an impressive number of dogwood trees, even though after stepping back, the result, seen from the distance, did not fully reflect what we had achieved. We are determined to come back and finish off the rest of the trees. That job will have to wait until later in the year as the bird nesting season is approaching and we cannot risk destroying the habitat in such a critical time.

Friends of Grove Farm assured us there are plenty of other jobs to do, sign up for next month's session now!

The January conservation day at Grove Farm started with blue skies and bird song above the volunteers' heads - a setting that felt like a perfect day to start an adventure with GoodGym!

Maria took advantage of such a beautiful morning to come to her first session at Greenford's nature reserve for an environment-friendly workout with GoodGymers Sevan, Kash and Liuba.

Mike, who was leading one of the Grove Farm teams today, took the GoodGym four to the lower part of the area where wood anemones bloom in the Spring. The white flowers come out only if the space is cleared of brambles that otherwise block the sunlight for other plants. You might have guessed by now what our task was: a bramble bash! Mike gave us instructions and listed the safety risks (including slippery ground and Kash swinging her hedge trimmer), then left for a short time to fetch two new Grove Farm volunteers.

Liuba and Maria were meticulously cutting the brambles with loppers while Kash harnessed the power of Mike's power tool to clear big expanses of invasive plants. Sevan was the only person with the rake and it was his job to move all the trimmings away from the path and build a dead hedge. In case you are curious, a dead hedge is a fence-like construction made of cut logs, branches, sticks, stems, etc. that slowly decomposes and makes a fantastic habitat for insects and small mammals - it becomes a hub for biodiversity!

By the time Mike came back with reinforcements, the GoodGym team made great progress. After two extra volunteers joined with loppers and a rake, the slope above the lower woodland path was rapidly cleared. The team took a break to savour tea and biscuits Anna brought for everyone, then Maria and Liuba stayed for an extended session with the Friends of Grove Farm and Sevan and Kash ran off to be on time for their next sessions.

If bramble bash in ancient woodland plus tea and biscuits sounds like your thing, why not join next month's session? Sign up now!

The thermometers were showing -5 degrees on Saturday morning and Grove Farm looked stunning under a thin layer of frost, glittering in the sunlight. The frosty cover hid not only the beauty of nature, but also mysteries.

The Friends of Grove Farm: Mike, Anna, Olena and other volunteers, together with Cathy from LAGER Can, were about to perform their investigations as a flytip was found at the end of the lane leading to David Lloyd sports centre. To be extra thorough, five GoodGymers joined the survey of the entire lane: Christos, Diana, Sevan, Steph Ducat and Kash.

At the flytip site, the detectives discovered plenty of metal pieces: nuts, bolts, washers, elements for connecting scaffolding parts and stuff they were not sure what was for. The metal was collected into two strong fabric bags and loaded onto a trolley. The team spied some incriminating correspondence, giving away the identity and address of the suspected flytipper. They may get justice even if they haven't been caught red-handed!

Speaking of hands and temperature, probably the biggest challenge for the volunteers today was operating the litterpickers with half-frozen fingers. Some precautious GoodGymers fought the cold with double gloves. But the cold must have held some benefits!

"It's to keep us young." - Diana

Why spend a fortune on cryogenic therapy to reverse aging when you have winter sessions at Grove Farm? If you missed the first one this year - not all is lost! Meet us for the conservation day in two weeks and help remove invasive plants from the woodland - sign up here.

Some may think that winter sessions at Grove Farm are only for the toughest kind, double-gloved and oblivious to the elements. Nothing further from the truth! Although some of us felt slightly chilly this morning, the session was a heartwarming experience - a perfect task leading onto Christmas.

The first element that made the community mission so gratifying was teamwork - just like at last month's session. Christos paired Livio and Penny with Kash to form the trimmer-rake duos to remove invasive brambles in the area where the wood anemones would grow in the sprint. With the lack of a third hedge trimmer, Sevan and Mike both took on more precise work: cutting the brambles with shears around ferns. Anna did a litter-picking round, then started carrying the trimmings with Christos deeper into the woods to build a dead hedge.

The second joyful thing about the session was the sunshine we had been waiting for two weeks - and it lasted longer than two seconds!

The third comforting piece was the break we had and the tea Anna brought for everyone. It was such a nice feeling to warm our hands by holding a steamy cup of a hot beverage.

The fourth component was a surprise birthday cake for Sevan. The treat was as tough as the birthday person himself and resisted Anna's and Kash's combined efforts to put a candle in it! Sevan managed to cut it into pieces and everyone enjoyed a slice of Biscoff-flavoured goodness.

Finally, the Fifth Element was the reward of knowing we were working behind the scenes to make the wood anemone display in 2025 a beautiful experience for all park visitors in the Spring!

Next month, we are back to the regular schedule at Grove Farm - sign up to join us on the fourth Saturday of January!

The November conservation day at Grove Farm meant resuming the everlasting war on brambles to allow the wood anemones to flower in spring. The landscape of the usual blackberry-anemone battlefield looked somewhat different than in previous years, with seemingly new vegetation sprouting.

Sevan: "Stupid question: Have those trees been here before?"
Anna: "Yes. We coppiced them 3 years ago, and now they got more bushy."

Sevan and Kash ran 8.5 km to Grove Farm from their earlier mission in Acton, stopped only by a cup of coffee in Ealing, while Penny took a combination of public transport and walking through the foresty parts of Sudbuty Hill. The GoodGymers met Anna, Mike and Olena - Friends of Grove Farm, and Sue and Fred - members of several other volunteer groups.

Penny decided on the more demanding way to cut brambles: manually, using the shears, while Sevan paired with Mike and Kash with Olena. In each of the duos one person had a hedge trimmer and the other a rake. The pairs worked in absolute harmony, the rake pulling the brambles away and the trimmer cutting through them effortlessly.

The results of the work of the entire team were excellent. A couple of similar sessions in the winter months should keep the brambles at bay and let the wood anemones bloom when the spring comes.