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.
Task Day 24 September 2011
Another successful task day with a lot of work done to the War Memorial beds including removing ornamental grasses that had spread too much and planting of new shrubs and plants kindly donated by Marple Garden Centre.
Preparatory work was also carried out on one of the park benches near to the Junior Play area, the refurbishment of which is being paid for by a local family. Today we stripped off the old slats and cleaned and painted the frame ready for fitting of brand new hardwood slats and a commemorative plaque.
Unfortunately the camera had a flat battery, so just this one panoramic view of work to the War Memorial beds taken by phone.
Task Day 27 August 2011
The Bank Holiday weekend saw a smaller turnout than usual but plenty was achieved with more donated plants being added to the War Memorial Beds, Jet Washing of about half the Infants Play Area fence, re-installation of one of the Acorn Sculptures that had been removed by vandals and removal of a large truck-load of brambles from the Breathe Places Area behind the library. Thanks once again are due to Les and Jean White for donation of the War Memorial plants.
Task Day 30 July 2011
Glorious sunshine at last allowed us to make the most of the summer weather during a task day in the park. A selection of plants were added to the War Memorial Rockery and copious weeding was carried out in the ornamental beds. Some strawberries and parsley were also added to the Rainbows and Beavers' beds. The plants added today and also a good number provided earlier this month have been donated by local gardeners Les and Jean White and we are very grateful for their generosity.
A final coat of black paint was also added to the Bowling Green building.
Task Day 25 June 2011
A smaller turn-out than we've been getting for a while on this special task day to celebrate National Civic Day and Marple Civic Society's 50th Anniversary. Lost of local groups carried out tasks throughout the Marple area during the morning and then in the afternoon joined Marple Civic Society to celebrate with a picnic lunch and entertainment from Marple's Brass Bands. In the morning we managed to weed the ornamental flowerbeds, which and now getting well established, put another coat of paint on the Bowling Green buildings, tidy the shrub bed near to the Junior Play Area and even do a crown-lift on trees that were swamping the benches near to the Park Keeper's Cottage.
In the afternoon Emily Myers collected a certificate from MP Andrew Stunell to commemorate our participation in National Civic Day. Visit the Marple Website Virtual History Tour for more photos from the Civic Day celebrations.
Task Day 28 May 2011
AT LAST a large amount of plants had arrived, although still not all of them. However, there were enough to make a good start on planting up of our five adopted flowerbeds and with a very good turnout of volunteers there were plenty of willing hands to share the workload. The council had made good progress on the planting of their own flower beds earlier in the week and the Rainbows and Beavers have also got stuck into theirs so all around things are suddenly looking much better. When the remaining plants are delivered it should not be too hard to get finished and we now just need a decent amount of rain to give everything a good watering in. Well done everyone who worked so hard today!
Task Day 30 April 2011
Another good turnout of volunteers enabled us to tackle two main tasks, one was painting of the second bowling green building to match the one we did last year and many hands made light work of this. We also made some repairs to the doors. The second was clearance of weeds from the ornamental beds in preparation for planting. We still don't have all the plants we've ordered for these beds yet but with all the sunshine we've had recently it's perhaps just as well - we need some rain soon! Wooden items including tree sculpture and stocks were treated to another can of preservative and some work was done on the shrub beds too. Well done everyone!
