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.
Unfortunately the wet weather prevented us from doing any painting and we may have to finish the Infants Play Area next year now, unless we have some unexpectedly fine weather in October or November. However, we had a very good turnout of volunteers and a great deal of tidying up around the park was achieved, including the removal of brambles, ash tree saplings and ivy from the perimeter wall bordering the canal tow path. Other areas to benefit from our volunteers' efforts were the cinema flower bed and the beds and areas around the council offices.
In addition, on Sunday 30th, while the Jubilee Sculpture was being installed, a lot of work was done on the shrub bed bordering the Senior Citizens' Hall.
More fine weather allowed us to continue making progress on the painting of the Infants Play Area and the end is in sight now if we can just have a couple more sunny days!
Lots of hard work was put into the flowerbed in the car park next to the council offices and this is looking much better.
The bolt holes on a number of recently refurbished benches were plugged and they were also re-treated with preservative. Later some work was also done in the Breathing Places area and to the flowerbed in front of the toilets.
The Diamond Jubilee Flowerbed has re-flowered and was covered in bees - this is looking really good and we are hoping that the sculpture will soon be ready to install.
Tree work in the park has started and one of our favourite trees has had to be removed due to decay and a huge crack. We were concerned about how this area of the park would look when the tree was gone but thankfully it has not been as bad as we were expecting and the views are still great. A large dead chestnut tree is also in the process of being removed.
We fell lucky with the weather again, as the thunderstorms were just starting to kick-off as we packed up to go home.
Another very successful task day saw the two old concrete benches near to the library being refurbished using timber that we had rescued from a couple of similar benches that had been replaced by new ones. We were also able to make some more progress on the painting of the Infants Play Area. Repairs were done to the inner fence around the swings and red paint to three of the four sides in the same area was finished before the downpours began.
A whole lot of work was also done on the War Memorial beds and these really are starting to look good now.
Thank you everyone who helped today!
Great weather again allowed us to make excellent progress on painting the red inner sections of the Infants Play Area fence. Another bench was refurbished and several others given a fresh coat of preservative, some hacking back done in the shrub bed near to the bowling green and hacking back and weeding was done in the ornamental flowerbeds that we adopted last year too.
Several of the volunteers have been receiving positive comments from members of the public while they are working in the park about how good it's looking. It's very encouraging to receive compliments like this so please do take the time to stop and chat when you see us working in the park and tell us what you think.
After teasing us early on the weather turned glorious and we had a very productive day. We were delighted that Bramhall Paving Services, our contractor for the hard landscaping works on the Diamond Jubilee Bed, was at last able to start work after prolonged delays waiting for Planning Permission.
While they were busy in front of the library a small number of volunteers tackled refurbishment of one of the Co-Op benches near to the entrance; weeding of the Sensory Garden bed; treatment of the Sensory Garden bench and the Stocks; maintenance in the Breathing Places wildlife area and more planting in the War Memorial beds. After things dried up a bit we were even able to continue painting the Infants Play Area fence!
More of a task weekend than a task day! On Saturday we made the most of the good weather by treating benches, clearing the library bed ready for landscape works, weeding ornamental and Memorial beds and treating algae on the War Memorial. On Sunday we then transported to the park and installed the first of two benches near the bowling green whose refurbishment has been sponsored by Marple Senior Citizens and carried out by Friends of the Park. The second bench was then dismantled ready for refurbishment too. A third similar bench was sponsored by Marple Business Forum earlier this year.
