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.
Park tidy-up for Remembrance Service helped by Brabyns Prep Pupils
Friends of the Park always put in a big effort just before the Remembrance Sunday Service to try and ensure that the park looks its best but wind and fallen leaves always make this a challenge! This year we had a special two-day clean-up on Friday and Saturday with extra-special help from pupils of Brabyns Preparatory School on the Friday afternoon. We were very impressed with the children's hard work and also how the older ones took care and chaperoned the young ones.
On Saturday volunteers continued the battle, focused on the park entrance and the road leading in to the car park. We also tidied around the War Memorial and surrounding flower beds and ensured the park was clear of litter.
A beautiful autumn day in the park on Saturday planting crocuses and clearing leaves. The leaves were taken to a composting area in the park and we hope that we'll get some great compost from them to feed back into the flowerbeds. The crocuses were donated to us by Marple and Goyt Valley Rotary and were planted in swirls alongside the main pathway. We've looking forward to them bursting into life in the spring.
Another great effort from local volunteers as we look towards the Remembrance Service on Sunday 8 November and try to make sure the park is at its best for this. Paths were weeded and swept, leaves raked and moved to our new leaf composting area and flowerbeds trimmed and tidied. We extended the WWI display on the railings of Hollins house as the first section is now full and replaced the commemorative flag on the pole nearest the building too. We also repaired guttering on the Bowler Hut, as we're fed up of waiting for the council to do it, picked litter and treated benches.
We had a fantastic response from park users today, who left more than £52 in our collection bucket. One person left a note with their donation asking for the money to be put towards the flowerbeds and we can clarify that all money collected in the park during out task days is allocated to our general fund for the plants and tools we need to keep the park looking its best. We feel that people add money to our bucket in response to the work they see us doing and that is what we should use it for.
Hard working Marple volunteers continued their good work in the park with multiple tasks including hedge and shrub trimming, bulb planting, bench treating, flowerbed maintenance, picking up leaves, litter and dog mess.
It was a glorious day in the park and passers-by donated almost £12 in our collection bucket, thank you!
Volunteers braved the rain that continued in fits and starts throughout today's session with work on the main flowerbeds, the library bed and toilet bed. A good dose of pruning back was also carried out at the Garth Road shrub bed too. General litter picking and clearing of dog mess from around the War Memorial and flowerbeds was also unfortunately necessary. The park was much quieter than normal due to the weather but visitors still managed to pop more than £5 in our collection bucket.
It was good to note that repair to the edges of the safe surfaces in the Junior Play Area is currently underway and we should soon have that new roundabout we campaigned for earlier in the year.
Our first task day using power tools was another productive day, as we tried out our brand new standard and long-reach petrol-driven hedge trimmers. It's taken a long time to get to this stage but it should make many tasks much easier.
While some played with new toys, others were grafting hard to keep the flowerbeds in great shape. We received lots of wonderful and encouraging comments about them and park users dropped nearly £25 in our donation bucket to show their appreciation. Work on park benches and litter-picking too means that the park is still looking its best thanks to Marple volunteers.
