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.
Only the die-hards braved the early morning drizzle today, when the main task was to rearrange one of the beds near to the council offices and the car park by pruning and moving the shrubs at the front to the back and removing brambles. We also did a bit of hoeing around the newly planted War Memorial Beds and made a start on tidying up the Sensory Garden. The new Memorial Beds are looking good and we are looking forward to seeing them mature. Also looking good is the Breathing Places woodland behind the library, where the crocuses are kicking off their spring display in spectacular fashion.
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The first task day of 2009 was nowhere near as cold, wet or windy as we'd expected and we managed to transplant virtually all the remaining plants from the War Memorial flowerbeds to various other locations in the park. This is in preparation for the brand new planting scheme for the War Memorial beds that should make another long term improvement to the appearance of the area around the memorial.
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Today's main task was to install the new interpretation board for the Breathing Places project behind the library. This proved to be a daunting task indeed. Read more about it on the Breathing Places project page. In addition, nearly three sacks of daffodil bulbs were planted in the triangular area near to the Park Keeper's cottage and in the Breathing Places borders. A good turn out and well done to everyone involved.
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The main event today was a special session with Marple's Beaver Scouts joining us to plant a variety of wildflowers in the BBC Breathing Places behind the library. After the Beavers had retired to the library for hot chocolate and cookies the rest of us carried on planting more wildflowers in the boggy area near where the canal arm to Hollins Mill used to run. For more photos see the Breathing Places project page.
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September's Task Day was more of the usual routine, with ground sculptures and tree sculpture given another coat of oil. There was also more weeding and tidying of the ornamental beds, which looked so good after they were finished it prompted Arthur Procter to say "I though the Friends of Marple Memorial Park made such a good job yesterday after the tidy up, I took a photograph. Keep up the great work." Arthur's photo is featured below:
For our August Task Day we weeded the ornamental flowerbeds once again - it's like a never ending battle at the moment! We also sanded down the new acorn and beechnut ground sculptures and gave them their first coat of decking oil to combat the weather.
We also rolled the new French Boules court in preparation for the fun tournament in the afternoon. See the Boules Court page for more information about this.
This month the Youth Offending Team joined us for the last time, as they now have new commitments every Saturday that will prevent them from attending in future. We would like to thank them for the help they have given us in the park during a good number of task days over the last eighteen months or so. We hope that they got something out of it too and it helped at least a little in their rehabilitation.