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!