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.
A very damp day and autumn now has a firm grip with a golden display of leaves in the park - they look great but are hard work to clear! Tasks today included planting of wall flowers kindly donated by a local gardener, management of the woodland areas, tidying of flowerbeds, pruning of shrub beds, litter-picking and clearing of leaves. Also pruning of roses in the Charles Ingham Bandroom garden. Despite the damp over £12 was collected in our donations bucket, so thank you to park visitors once again!
It was most hands to the flowerbeds today as we do our best to keep everything looking good leading up to Remembrance in November. There was also some regular maintenance done on the Bandroom garden, maintenance along the canal-side woodland walk, some planting of roses in borders and the inevitable litter-picking, which is a never ending task. In addition, one of the Bowling Green benches was found to have graffiti so was given a rub-down and coat of preservative.
Around £26 was collected in our donations bucket, so thank you to park visitors!
We focused mainly on the Woodland area behind the library during today's task day but also litter picked throughout the park, shifted last year's composting leaves to make space for more later this year, trimmed shrubs in the Infants Play Area and weeded, edged and raked the French Boules Court too.
Our mini plant-sale and collection was particularly successful with over £35 being donated by visitors to the park.
Today's activities included trimming hedges around the Bandroom, cutting back of shrubs around the council offices and the scout hut, edging of flowerbeds with our new shears, tidying up and new planting in the Memorial Beds and weeding of flowerbeds. We also had another mini plant-sale and raised just over £22 from generous visitors to the park.
Flowerbeds and borders were the main focus of this Bank Holiday task day and despite some of our regular volunteers being away, lots of good work was completed.
Activities included putting up some wire supports for our new plants behind the toilet block, removal of Ash saplings that had self-seeded in the shrub beds, removal of bracken that had done the same and litter-picking throughout the park. We also made some more progress on our project to refurbish the Town Centre benches.
As well as our usual collection bucket we sold some plants and baby Christmas trees, raising £26 from visitors to the park.
A very productive day for our volunteers, with work on the Library Jubilee Bed, the Woodland Reading Circle, Infants Play Area Bed, Sensory Bed, Office Bed and the Bandroom Garden. We also prepared an area of one flowerbed for something new and rather special we've been working on. Watch this space for more news!
More work on benches in the park too, and also work on reburbishment of another Town Centre bench as well.
Visitors to Marple Library left £6 in our collection bucket too, not as good as the flowerbed area we usually put it but it all counts!