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.
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!
Today we were blessed with a fantastic turnout of volunteers, possibly the most we've ever had. Unfortunately the plants and shrubs for the ornamental flowerbeds have not arrived yet so many hands made light work of a major tidy-up of the two large shrub beds nearest to the park entrance. The whole of the grassed area was also raked of twigs and small branches that had fallen from the trees over winter. In the meantime, Patrick used a whole tin of preservative on the carved Infant Play Area sign and the tree sculptures, which all looked much better for his efforts.
After a break for tea, coffee, ice-lollies and cakes the good work continued on the Sensory Garden, which looked much better for some TLC. Altogether a very successful day's work - so a big thank you to all our new volunteers!
It was so wet overnight, and still raining in the morning, that expectations were pretty low for a productive day. Thankfully the rain held off and we ended up achieving quite a bit more than first thought. Unfortunately the wet did stop us getting properly stuck into the newly adopted flowerbeds but we did at least manage to redefine the edges of the beds. We also weeded and cleared the edges of the paths along the main entrance and up the drive to the car park. We did some more work on the Park Keeper's cottage garden, repaired a bench and had a good tidy up in the Infants Play Area.
We were also pleased to welcome Joyce, our third new volunteer this year!
The weather for our first task day of 2011 was very kind, with a cold frost early on but brilliant sunshine soon warmed things up. We were very pleased to welcome two new volunteers, John and Lorraine, who quickly got stuck in to tidying up around the Park Keepers Cottage and round the composting area near to the boundary alongside the canal. There was also time for a general tidy up of the War Memorial beds and a survey of all the park benches was carried out - there's going to be lots to keep us busy in 2011!
A bitterly cold day kept the numbers down but it was amazing how quickly we warmed up after grafting away at clearing leaves from under the hedges along Station Road and Garth Road. That was our last task day of 2010 and we can look back on a busy year with some satisfaction and hope for more of the same in 2011.
We were joined by 1st Marple Beavers and parents on a glorious autumn day to plant 2,000 purple crocus bulbs around the apple and pear sculptures near to the library. 1,000 of the crocuses were provided by New Mills, Marple and District Rotary Club as part of their nationwide campaign to promote awareness about vaccination of children in India against Polio. Children are are marked with a purple spot to show that they have been vaccinated and we planted the crocuses in circles to represent this. A plaque will be provided by the Rotary Club to explain this in the spring, when the bulbs are in flower.
We also continued painting the Bowling Green buildings and had a bit of a tidy-up of the grass verges in the infants play area.
