Tonight we gathered to finish the job started on Tuesday at St Leonards. The task was to extract a massive holly tree stump from the churchyard so a wild flower meadow can be planted in its place.

After a quick chat with a local churchgoer about some of the site's history (did you know Jane Austin was a regular at this unassuming Streatham church?) we set about with tools, continuing with the previous roots manoeuvre of unearthing and then hacking with the pickaxe. Steve got quickly into the swing of things, and within 25 minutes he'd managed to sever the last remaining roots, allowing us to use our heaving might to wrench the whole stump out.

Then it was just a matter of filling the hole back in, minus the complement of wrappers and rocks. Ali was amazed and very grateful, as was a passer by (who had been involved early on in the project and admitted she had thought it couldn't be done). Hopefully the new meadow will bring just as much joy to the community.

An octet of wonderful GoodGymers got together on a windy Tuesday evening to dig deep and try to uproot the roots of a holly bush. Just one - but it turns out it's no mean feat.

Our beneficiary was St Leonard's Church in Streatham. We don't often trek that far south so it was a nice change. They're looking to turn a disused patch of the cemetery into a peaceful haven of wildflowers for bees, birds and even people. But stuck in the middle was a holly bush. Ali and her team had trimmed off all the leaves and sawn (sawed?) off most of the thinner branches, but our help was required to try and excavate the roots.

With an abundance of tools, we got to work, digging, sawing, mattock-ing, pick-axing, shoveling, rocking (see photo of Becca's interesting method) etc. etc. deep into the earth, trying to figure out the root system to remove the bulk of the trunk. Alas - it was not to be and after a solid 90 minutes we called it a day, conceding that we'd need to come back afresh to finish the job.

Despite not being able to remove the trunk, we did feel like archeologists, unearthing some vintage crisp packets and chocolate bar wrappers (see pics).

Seriously good work guys!! 👏👏👏

Here's the link to sign up to the return trip!