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.
Great to get our volunteers back in the park after such a long break!
We were last in the park on 12 November, that's the longest break we've had for many years and it was great to get back and get stuck in!
We got an early start to install our new sign at the skatepark while the majority of our volunteers piled onto the War Memorial beds. Others started tidying the woodland and creating wildlife habitats where we've had a few large branches come down. We did some work on the shrubs around the back of the Play Area and planted bulbs around the hard-standing of the Roundels Art Project too. Last but not least, we also got started on our project to overhaul the allotment beds now that we've accepted them back from Marple Allotment Association.
Thank you to members of the public who placed over £21 in our collection bucket during the day.
Time to take the decorations down!
Installing and removing the Nativity Sculptures on Market Street has become our traditional task for the end of each year and start of the new.
This morning we had to chuckle at the aviator sunglasses Mary was wearing when we turned up to take them back into storage.
The Park is ready for Remembrance Sunday
We had a great turnout of volunteers to help put the final touches to preparations of the park for this year's Remembrance Sunday Service.
Thank you to the park visitors who deposited over £25 in our collection bucket!
Thanks also to Hollins of Marple for the donation of a wheelbarrow full of perennial plants for the park flowerbeds!
Getting ready for Remembrance
Over the next couple of task days we'll be focussed on getting the park ready for Remembrance. Our volunteers were busy on the main flowerbeds this task day but our regular cameraman was absent. So we are delighted to share a couple of photos taken by one of the Totally Local Company operatives recently on an atmospheric early morning.
This is a great opportunity to say thank you to the operatives at the sharp-end whose efforts often complement our own!
A special treat from The Coffee Bean Dream!
Today's special treat for volunteers attending our task day was free coffee or tea at break-time provided by The Coffee Bean Dream. Friends of the Park believe Sarah and her friendly young staff are a fantastic asset to the park and Sarah is very supportive of what we do. We hope the community will help us support them by buying their drinks and treats when using the park.
Of course we did do some work to earn our break!
Today we did some work re-levelling and tamping the new surface created under the picnic benches in the Infants Play Area recently. At the moment this isn't compacting and settling the way it was expected and we've started a dialogue with the council to work out the best solution. We finished pruning one of the large shrub beds and worked on the war memorial beds too.
We also had to cut-off a padlock that had stopped working, clear a gutter and down-pipe on the former bowling pavilion and fill in a whole dug by dogs in the middle of the park that was pointed out to us by a park user. One job we didn't do ourselves but instigated with the council is the rebuilding of the small war memorial in the park. We're very please indeed with the job they've done and it's great to see it finished before Remembrance activities get underway for this year.
A productive task day tinged with sadness
In many ways it was a normal and productive day for Friends of the Park volunteers but one tinged with sadness caused by disheartening vandalism to a much-loved mature tree in the park by persons unknown. We clearly share that sadness with young people who use the park and felt compelled to publish a public statement about the criminal damage caused to the white Birch tree near to Lock 11. It's important to us to make sure local people do not think it was Friends of the Park volunteers who carried out this despicable act.
In terms of work done, we dismantled the remaining School Gardens bed created by All Saints' School and relocated most of the soil to what will become our new raised allotment bed. We also did a lot of tidying-up to the Reading Circle behind the library and some shrub-tidying at the Bandroom Garden. Later, we went and tidied up the branches left strewn around the woodland by the vandals and created some potential wildlife habitats. It was during this activity that we discovered posters left by young people who have been saddened too.
