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.
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.
It's been two years since the Friends Group first offered to venture outside of the park and refurbish the benches on Market Street, Derby Way and other areas of the Town Centre. With the main obstacles of power-tools and risk assessment training finally overcome, we are now at last in a position to be able to do this work whilst covered by the council's insurance.
Trial bench completed
After a prolonged campaign, lobbying the council to help us get into this position, we're delighted to have completed our first trial bench at long last on Sunday 23 August. This is the one on Market Street, near to the NatWest Bank, and we hope that people who see it will agree that it's a huge improvement. You can see the transformation in the photos below:
Why do a trial bench?
The objective of doing a trial bench was to show people what we could do and also to learn for ourselves how easy or difficult the task would be. We learned a great deal while doing this first bench and would now like to tackle the remainder with our trained volunteers, however, there is now the issue of funding to tackle. We don't feel that funds raised for the park should be used to refurbish all of the town centre benches.
Funding needed to tackle the rest of the benches
So we now need to find some funds to allow us to get stuck into the remaining benches. We need to cover the cost of sanding materials, paint, brushes, preservative, fuel (for our generator), replacement tools and maintenance costs for the next couple of years (we will need to treat them at least once a year to keep them looking their best).
We are hoping that local shops and businesses will be prepared to sponsor the refurbishment of a bench near to their premises. We are proposing that a donation of £100 will cover the refurbishment of one bench plus ongoing maintenance for two years. We can also offer an option where the sponsor can pay to have a plaque fitted to the bench they have sponsored. This will increase the cost to £160 to include the provision of a plaque saying "Sponsored by Your Business, refurbished by Friends of Memorial Park", just like the one below, which can be seen on one of the refurbished benches near to the park entrance:
Any surplus funds left over will be used by the Friends for improvements to Marple Memorial Park.
Get in touch if you want to help us smarten up Marple Town Centre!
If your local business would like to sponsor the refurbishment of a Town Centre Bench outside your premises, please get in touch with Mark Whittaker or Patrick O'Herlihy of Friends of the Park.
A productive day as a dozen volunteers beavered away in the park weeding beds and paths, planting new plants and shrubs, treating benches and sculptures, trimming hedges and shrubs and picking up litter and dog mess. Marple Allotment Association were out in force too. We had our donation bucket out and also gave away some tiny potted Christmas trees for kids to grow on. Generous park users contributed over £16 to our gardening fund. It's good to be appreciated, thank you!
Glorious weather for this weekend's task day and mostly all hands to the shrub bed near to the Bowling Green, which we hadn't realised was quite so overgrown! Other tasks included treatment of benches and sculptures, planting in the Garth Road shrub bed, weeding and leveling of the French Boules Court, a few plants added to the flowerbeds, litter picking throughout the park and, frustratingly, picking up quite a lot of dog mess!
It was good to chat with new local councillor Annette Finnie, who was very complimentary about the efforts of our volunteers, and several other park users too. One chap returned after talking to us with a huge bag of copper coins. We've still to count this yet but other members of the public donated nearly £8 in our bucket too.
This week volunteers tackled the woodland behind the library, treatment of benches, tidying of the Garth Road shrub bed, hacking back of ivy on the toilet block, trimming of flowerbed borders, litter picking and repair of a picnic bench in the Infants Play Area. Another good day, thank you folks!
A handful of volunteers worked on the flowerbeds, the cinema shrub bed and weeding the paths around the library today while three others were trained in the use of power-tools by Solutions SK in Brabyns Park. The training will allow us to use small power tools like drills and sanders as well as the larger tools we were trained on. After finishing in the park we did some work on Lock 17, the project we did with Marple Locks Heritage Society several years ago to commemorate the late Gordon Mills.
