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.
It was great to be back in the park with the sun shining, despite the bitter cold wind early on.
Today we planted another 3 large sacks of free bulbs, this time near to the new landscaping works done by the council at the skatepark. These are too late for this year but when bulbs are free and they are going to be thrown away by a garden centre then we think they're better being planted in our park. Hopefully they'll reward us with some spring colour next year.
We also had a good tidy-up of the War Memorial beds and the circular flowerbed ready for this year's new growth, removed the old chains from the benches that were relocated last year and picked a great deal of litter.
We took advantage of the sunshine to put our collection bucket out for the first time in 2018 and were rewarded with donations of just over £17 from park visitors. We also received a big bag of change from Marple Co-Op, which we haven't counted yet.
After cancelling our last two task days of 2017 due to the weather it was great to get back in the park for the first time this year.
The whole park was still very wet but we managed to weed the Boules Court, do some litter-picking, spread wood chippings a shrub bed and plant another 25Kg of daffodils. The latter was a prize won from Parker's by the Open Gardens in Marple team. These were donated to Friends of the Park and we planted them in two waves near to the Infants Play Area. They've gone in a little late so we're not sure how good a show they will put on this year but there's always next year if they don't.
We also rescued the Poppy Rocks painted by local children during Remembrance last year. The council had removed them with the wreaths from around the war memorial and they were left in bin bags, presumably for disposal. We've placed them in front of the small memorial where people leave the crosses and hopefully they can stay here if nobody interferes with them.
We squeezed in a quick ad-hoc task day on Friday 3rd November in order to catch-up with planting of bulbs provided by the council. On this occasion we planted daffodils in the Bandroom Garden and Snowdrops in the Infants Play Area.
On Armistice Day we returned to the park to ensure it was looking its best for the Remembrance Sunday Service on the following day. The council's parks team had done a lot of leaf clearing earlier in the week and this left us to focus on clearing and tidying the main flowerbeds and the memorial beds. Of course we observed the 2 minutes silence with other park visitors too at 11am. We also had time to plant a further 5,000 crocus bulbs provided by New Mills, Marple and District Rotary to commemorate the International Rotary campaign to eradicate Polio across the world. The purple crocuses were planted in circles within the Infants Play Area to represent the purple spot placed on children's foreheads when they are vaccinated against Polio in places like India. These extra crocuses complement those provided by Stockport Rotary and planted in September and take the total number of extra bulbs added in the park by the Friends Group this year to almost 15,000.
Our collection bucket was out this weekend and donations from the public of over £27 were gratefully received.
Mostly planting of bulbs supplied by the council's Greenspace team today, including daffodils and narcissi, bluebells, tete-a-tete, hyacinths and snowdrops. Once we'd planted bulbs along the shrub bed between the library and the bandroom we started spreading woodchip donated by a local tree surgeon who had been working in the park.
We didn't put our collection bucket out today because it was so damp and dreary but one of the Co-Op volunteers came along with more than £60 in change donated by their customers, which more than made up for it.
We were treated to a carrot cake birthday cake during our tea break too, plus a cheeky trip to Oldknow's once we'd finished.
Time for a good tidy-up in our lock-up store! We started spreading the leaf mould we've been collecting over the last couple of years around the War Memorial beds after giving them a good tidy too. Attention was also given to the main flowerbeds and shrub beds around the offices. We put out some gardening magazines for the public to help themselves to and as ever they were generous with donations totalling over £20 in our bucket.
A damp day didn't deter a hard-core of volunteers from a busy morning grafting in the park.
The main task today was planting 5,000 Crocuses provided to us by the Rotary Club of Stockport. They were planted in two trenches across the front of the Infants Play Area, so next spring we should be treated to a band of purple to commemorate the Rotary Club's battle to eradicate Polio across the world. Thank you Stockport Rotary!
We also added some extra gravel to the Sensory Garden provided by the council and had a good tidy-up of the Jubilee flowerbed outside the library in preparation for repairs to the coping.
With the damp weather we didn't put our collection bucket out today but still came away with just over £27 for the park from our collection box at the Co-Op. This was brought along by two of their volunteers working in the community.
