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.
What a difference a day makes! Just a handful of volunteers braved the rain to add more plants to the flowerbeds during today's task day - the plants love it of course - and a team from Marple Allotment Association too. Despite the weather it was a productive day and the flowerbeds are looking fantastic!
It was a relief that the weather held out because as well as our regular task day activities, today was the Family Treasure Hunt in the Park organised in conjunction with new local estate agent Julian Wadden, whose premises is close to the park entrance.
Flowerbeds and Benches
For task day volunteers it was all hands to the flowerbeds and benches. We're receiving fantastic comments about the beds and it seems that everyone is as pleased as we are with their progress but they do take a lot of weeding! The benches in the park have been transformed by our volunteers over the last few years and we're determined to keep on top of them now with regular cleaning, sanding and treating to keep them looking and performing their best.
Once again visitors to the park showed their support for what we are doing by placing £29 in our collection bucket.
Family Treasure Hunt
The Family Treasure Hunt, which ran from 11am to 2pm, was aimed at 3 to 10 year olds with parents, grandparents or carers assisting as needed. There were two sets of clues, one for ages 3-5 years and the other for 6-10 years. Children hunted for clues to answer questions that would reveal the information needed to open the Treasure Chest for a share of the booty. Everyone who completed the hunt took away 8 pieces of gold chocolate!
This was a FREE EVENT but there was a collection bucket for donations to Friends of Marple Memorial Park, a raffle with prizes donated by local businesses and the event programme was also sponsored by local businesses too.
The event today raised a grand total of £402 for the park.
Friends of the Park would like to say a huge thank you to Julian Wadden Estate Agents for organising this event with us and the following local businesses for their fantastic support:
Programme Sponsors: Magpie Cottages, Stationery Supplies, Marple Drama, Helen Winterson, Marple Local History Society, Kathy’s Caterpillars, Rhodes & Partners.
Raffle Prize Donors: Crafty Ladies, Pink Parrot, All Things Nice, The Antique Rose, Kay Dees Hair & Beauty, Harmony Decor, Gosling Toymaster, Costa Coffee, The Linen Room, Stationery Supplies, The Rolling Pin, Marple PO.
Thank you to everyone for supporting your local community park!
Another apple tree was planted today to replace the one snapped off by vandals, lots of new plants were added to the main flowerbeds, the infants play area bed, the sensory garden and the "Sweet Relief" bed (also known as the Bog Garden). Lots of weeding and tidying of flowerbeds and we were really pleased to be joined by a new volunteer who brought her baby along too.
Other tasks included a start to our annual programme of treatment to the wooden features in the park, a really good tidy-up of our tool store and a dose of litter picking.
Generous visitors to the park placed just over £18 in our collection bucket, even though we forgot to put it out until after 11am.
After clearing up loads of broken beer bottles left by those who think the park is there purely for their own convenience and have no regard for others, it was all hands to the flowerbeds for this end of April task Day. Other tasks included staking a couple of the fruit trees we planted last time, planting of a donated cobnut bush and a litter-pick around the park to remove Friday night's detritus. We also sold some used plant pots and had our donations bucket out again.
Generous park users who appreciate what we do popped almost £33 in the bucket but a special thank you is needed for the lady who purchased drinks and chocolate treats and gave them to our busy volunteers. Restores your faith in humanity!
Decent weather at last saw volunteers start the task day by digging out hundreds more ash saplings in the woods and planting 10 fruit trees along the canal-side woodland walk, while others tidied up the Reading Circle behind the library.
Following that it was all hands to the flowerbeds to start catching up on their maintenance and a thorough litter-pick of all areas of the park too. Park users donated nearly £7 in our bucket during the short time we were working on the beds too.
Not many photos this time due to heavy rain for most of the morning but a handful of volunteers donned waterproofs to brave the weather and a fair bit of work was achieved.
It wasn't one of our most rewarding days in the park to be honest. As well as the rain, we discovered that our WWI timeline display had been subjected to obscene graffiti, there was graffiti all over the benches near the bowling green and disgusting dog mess all around the flowerbeds. A litter-pick around the perimeter of the park also revealed numerous full dog poo bags thrown in the bushes. All this abuse of the park by people who use it is rather depressing.
We even found a new Asda sign that had been graffiti-ed and ripped off the wall. We've recently objected to this sign in our comments on Asda's planning application but do not condone its removal by vandals. We reported it to contractors in the Asda car park, however, we do hope that they will not refit it until after their planning application has been processed because we believe that the planners will take note of our comments on this particular sign and reject it.
On the positive side, shrub beds were maintained and several new plants put in, fence posts installed, a start was made bashing the huge amount of self-seeded saplings in the canal woodland and we had some fabulous cakes. We always have cakes during our tea breaks but today's were a special homemade treat by one of our volunteers and were definitely the highlight of the day!
