Friends of Marple Memorial Park Task Days
The Friends hold regular task days in the park on the last Saturday of each month in the winter and the middle and last Saturday from March to November. Everyone is welcome to join in for as long or as short they wish during the specified times. Please note that children and young people under 18 must be accompanied by a responsible adult.
If you are interested becoming a volunteer with us please get in touch and we will add you to our Task Day notifications.
We like to keep a record of what we get up and here are details of past task days.
After our huge Karcher Clean-Up Day on Thursday we had a quieter Task Day today with a good weed and tidy up of the flowerbeds in preparation for the Marple Locks Festival on Sunday. We also planted some new additions to the small bed in the Infants Play Area and re-installed the temporary barrier around the War Memorial beds that is protecting the roses. These are growing well apart from around 15 of the plants that seem to have died. We've contacted the supplier about these and are now waiting to learn how they propose to deal with the problem.
Most of the wooden benches in the park were also given another coat of preservative along with the stocks and the sculpture behind the library.
Marple Allotment Association were also in attendance and did more work on their adopted bed. On Sunday at the Marple Locks Festival we received lots of positive comments about this and generally how well the park is looking.
With summer here at last it was time for serious amounts of weeding in the Ornamental Beds, a full course of treatment for Midnight the Owl Tree Sculpture and a good tidy-up of the shrub beds at the entrance to the park near the cinema.
We were pleased to have a visit from local photographer Arthur Procter, who took several of the photos below.
In addition, a small team continued our project sponsored by Marple Area Committee to refurbish the two picnic benches down at the Recreation Ground. These are now both finished apart from the the plaque on the second bench, which will be refitted after it has been cleaned up.
Unfortunately a very damp day prevented photographs being taken during the action but, typically, it stopped raining as we finished and a few shots were then taken. Despite the rain volunteers weeded and added over 100 plants to the Sensory Garden, the Ornamental Beds, the War Memorial Beds and the Reading Circle behind the library.
Marple Allotment Association also braved the wet weather to continue development of their new plot.
Our main focus during today's task day was the planting out of a new Rose Hedge around the rear borders of the War Memorial Beds. We planted 30 Rose Stromboli specimens around each of the two borders and these should develop into a low hedge covered in red roses that flower between June and November each year.
This is part of our plans to commemorate the approaching centenaries of the Great War (1914-1918) and we hope that the new "Rose Wall" will be looking good in time for 2014, the 100th Anniversary of the start of the war that resulted in the dedication of our park to the community in 1922.
We've installed a temporary barrier around the beds to provide protection to the roses while they get established and we hope that people will respect our request to keep their dogs off the beds and not to walk on them.
Other tasks today included the repair of the Infants Play Area fence, which had been subject to vandalism with several slats being kicked out and planting of donated plants and shrubs in various areas.
Marple Allotment Association were in attendance again and have added more vegetables to their new plot.
In addition, yesterday one of our volunteers who couldn't attend today treated seven park benches with a new coat of preservative as a self-imposed penance and these are looking really good.
The weather gods must be on our side as they saved the best of the weekend's sunshine for our task day today.
It was a very good turn out with volunteers doing lots of work on the flowerbeds including the War Memorial beds, the Shuttle Stone bed, the Toilet Block bed and the two next to the council offices near to the car park. Pruning was also carried out to the shrub beds on the other side of the council offices too.
The Allotment Association were in attendance and continued the development of their newly adopted fruit, veg, herb and flower garden with the planting of a pair of apple trees. This is going to be a fascinating new feature in the park this summer. The Association are hoping visitors will pull out weeds in the bed while passing and take a small amount of produce as a reward.
Meanwhile, our team of intrepid bench restorers tackled a new project sponsored by a donation from Marple Area Committee to refurbish the picnic benches down at the Recreation Ground. These substantial benches, sponsored by Marple Civic Society and the Macnair Trust in 1990 have been the worse for wear and vandalism for a while now and Area Committee have paid for timber to refurbish the bench tops and seats. One bench was completed today and the other will be done soon. The original plaques will be cleaned up and replaced in the near future too.
Back in the park, our new jet wash was tested by giving Midnight the Owl Tree Sculpture a good hose-down to remove all the green before being treated with preservative next time.
With some decent weather at last we were pleased to welcome Marple and District Allotment Association to the Park. The Association has taken over the flowerbed previously maintained by the Rainbows and soon set about making it their own by clearing and forking it over, hoeing in 5lb of Growmore and then planting Gooseberry, Blueberry and Red and White Current bushes. As the sign they installed says, the Association plan to turn the bed into a mini vegetable plot that will include herbs, flowers, vegetables and fruit. We are really looking forward to seeing this new project develop over the coming months.
Whilst the Allotment Association toiled over their bed the Friends group set about pruning Dogwood and other trees and shrubs throughout the park and also installing the new display panel for the Diamond Jubilee Flowerbed near to the library. The display explains the background and inspiration for the bed and acknowledges the local community groups that contributed to this community project to commemorate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee that was started last year.
