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.
For our first ever mid-month task day we were joined by young people from Community Outreach who helped us to prepare the Infants Play Area Fence ready for painting later in the year. This was part of a special 3 day event organised by All Saints' Church called "Get Out and Love Marple", where 50 young people from all over our community spent 3 days doing random acts of kindness all over Marple. We were very grateful for all the extra pairs of hands to help us sand and scrape off all the loose paint and we were very pleased to get around two thirds of the fence done as it is a BIG job! Whilst this was going on other volunteers tidied shrub beds around the Council Offices too.
In addition, the Sensory Garden bench, which was only refurbished during the February task day, and also the new bench on the driveway into the park fitted in March were both rubbed down again and re-treated because of graffiti.
A lower turn out this month but once again those who did come along excelled themselves! The reading circle bed and borders in the Breathing Place were weeded and wild flower seeds were sown in the circular border. Perennial seeds were sown with Annuals so that we should have a show of colour this year but next year should be even better when the Perennials flower.
Wild flower plugs were also planted and wildflower seeds sown in the square bed next to the library and the never-ending task of weeding the ornamental beds was started for this year. It's great to see everything springing into life again after the winter.
As well as gardening tasks we continued our on-going project to care for the park's benches with the sanding and treatment of two more benches near to the Bowling Green. The Tree Sculpture was also given a jet-wash to remove all the green growth so that it can be given its annual treatment with preservative next month.
Kind weather and a really good turnout of volunteers resulted in an exceptionally productive day! Successes included transformation of the bed in front of the Toilets to celebrate the success of our campaign to stop them from closing. The straggly Hebes were mostly removed with a few being replanted at the back of the bed or elsewhere in the park. Polyanthus from the future Diamond Jubilee Bed were removed and transplanted to the Toilet Bed and other locations in the park.
The square bed next to the library and the Reading Circle behind it were re-weeded, forked and hoed in preparation for planting of wildflowers in the spring. One of the shrub beds bordering Hollins House and the car park was also weeded and tidied.
In addition, as part of our on-going project to care for the park's benches, the Sensory Garden Bench was dismantled, sanded, treated with preservative and reassembled. Also, the refurbishment of the notice board on the library wall was completed so that we can now start telling library users about our new Diamond Jubilee Project.
We were lucky with the weather on our first task day of 2012 - it could have been like yesterday's hail and thunderstorms but the winter sunshine was very pleasant. We installed new perspex in the display case outside the library in preparation for the start of our new Diamond Jubilee Project, more about that will appear on the site soon.
We cut some paving slabs ready for a new base that will be laid for a commemorative bench recently purchased by a local family. More about that will appear on our Caring for Park Benches page when it is installed.
We also carried out extensive pruning to the shrub bed alongside the path approaching the Park Cottage and that is now looking much tidier and will soon be full of new growth. Spring is just around the corner and the park is coming back to life!
An amazingly productive New Year's Eve task day! Although it was mostly wet and miserable and not very good for taking photographs we got a huge amount done. Achievements including clearing a bed near to the library ready for sowing wildflower seeds, reducing the gravel in the strip near the library and transplanting it to the Sensory Garden, a big sweep-up of the area in front of the library and refurbishment of the broken notice board on the library wall.
We also cleared the border around the Reading Circle behind the library ready for sowing wildflowers and transplanted the shrubs and plants from there to a number of other places in the park. Finally, we replaced the refurbished slats on the bench (Mac's Bench) that we stripped down last month and it looks absolutely brilliant - as good as new even. Well done everyone!
A quieter turn-out for our last task day of 2011 but we still got a fair bit done. Earlier in the week one of our volunteers had removed all the weeds from the border of the car park near to the library and today we removed the top layer of soil and replaced it with gravel, which we hope will suppress the weeds and keep it looking tidier. We also weeded the pathway to the Sensory Garden and added more gravel and put what we had left around the small memorial in the park where people like to place wooden crosses in memory of their lost relatives. After that we tidied the shrub border near to the Council Offices too.
We also removed the wooden slats from one of the commemorative seats near to the Bowling Green and jet-washed the upstands and paving. The slats will be refurbished in a workshop, treated and replaced as part of our ongoing project to replace or refurbish all of the benches in the park. There will be more about this long term project on the web site in the near future.
