Bespoke sponsors of Friends of Marple Memorial Park
Bespoke Sponsors are businesses who have come up with a unique way of supporting Friends of the Park that suits their special skills or circumstances. This doesn't have to cost a great deal of money but can involve commitment of time, resources, specialist skills and enthusiasm in varying measures. Thank you very much to our "Bespoke Sponsors"!
The most community-minded tree surgeon in Marple and beyond!
Myers Tree Care has been one of the group's most practical supporters for many years. Owner David Myers donated a commemorative Yew tree to the park way back in 2005 and the company has been our go-to service for anything to do with trees ever since. David was instrumental in putting us in touch with Andrew Frost, the tree sculptor who created Midnight the Owl for us, and also the nature sculpture behind the library, which Myers Tree Care installed for us free of charge...
Julian Wadden is the estate agents on the Hollins - just around the corner to the entrance of the park.
Their Marple Branch has worked with us to organise a Family Treasure Hunt in the park since 2015. The event has grown in popularity each year since it began, raising £402 in 2015, £941 in 2016, £1,450 in 2017, £2,154 in 2018 and £2,807 in 2019 - a grand total of £7,644 to date.
Winners of Dobbies "Help Your Community Grow" 2021
Back in early 2021, unbeknown to us, Friends of Marple Memorial Park were nominated by a local resident in the 2021 Dobbies Garden Centre "Help Your Community Grow" scheme. A number of other groups and organisations in the area received nominations too and there was a customer vote to decide which group each store would support in their area.
Friends of the Park were pleased to learn that we had received the highest number of votes in our area from Dobbies Marple customers and even more delighted to discover this meant an award of £500 worth of support from the Marple branch. There were some delays due to the pandemic and personal issues but we finally picked up our award in June 2022.
RIP Kevin Dowling
As local author KC Dowling, Kevin supported the park by donating a share of the income from his books "A Man of Insignificance" and "The Red Hat Guide to Manchester". Kevin was planning to repeat this generosity with his new book of poems shortly before his sad demise in October 2020.
Kevin's family knew this and chose Friends of Marple Memorial Park to be his charity for donations in lieu of flowers and have also continued to donate royalties from Kevin's books to Friends of the Park.
As a local councillor and Chair of Marple Area Committee during the time of our Skatepark Development Project, Kevin was very supportive and helpful, representing the council at our tender scoring meeting with local skatepark users in Marple Library.
Local artist Sarah Morley held an exhibition entitled "Art from the Parks" between 15 and 29 March at Marple Library in support of the Skatepark Project and managed to raise a brilliant total of £263 for our cause. This included £67 collected in donations and a contribution of £196 from the proceeds of the artwork sold.
Sarah is a local artist, living near Marple, and has a studio in Vernon Mill. The art featured in the exhibition showed different views and aspects of local parks, including those in and around Marple. Sarah first became interested in this subject matter when the Council was consulting on making cutbacks to the local parks last year and she thought it would be great subject for some paintings to hopefully get people more engaged with the wonderful and varied parks that we have around Stockport.