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.
We managed to find a weather window in between the recent downpours for our July task day, when the main project was to install the last of our tree sculptures, an apple and pear created for us by Andrew Frost. Andrew actually did these at the same time as the main tree sculpture and ground sculptures but unfortunately the apple was stolen from the Brabyns Park Depot before they could be installed. After a long wait because he was so busy Andrew kindly replaced the stolen apple free of charge and at last we have now managed have the fruits installed installed in the park. In addition, the more mundane task of weeding the War Memorial flowerbeds was completed without getting rained on once!
This month we prepared the Boules Court for the Locks Festival on 5th July by raking, weeding and trimming the grass around the court and under the new commemorative seats. A similar job was done on he Bowling Green to ensure it is also looking its best for the festival. During the task day family and friends of Danny Winter, the Royal Marine killed in Afghanistan earlier this year, laid a wreath in his memory below his dedication on the memorial that was added recently. Unfortunately they will have seen that the memorial has been defaced with graffiti, which we have reported to the council and hope it can be removed quickly. Some additional plants were also added to the war memorial beds to replace some of the specimens that have not survived the recent re-planting.
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The main task this month was to rub down and re-paint the Coronation Bench, installed in August 2006. It has fared pretty well over the last three years but was certainly ready for a lick of paint. After that all hands were turned to helping Bob and Adrian clear the formal beds ready for summer planting. A glorious day for it, lets hope we get many more this summer!
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April is becoming the traditional time to give "Midnight", our superb tree sculpture, a spring wash. It's very satisfying to blast off the strange fungal growth we keep getting on this. We're told by experts that it should stop eventually but it hasn't yet. Also lots of hoeing and weeding done around the park, isn't it looking fantastic now that spring is well and truly here!
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The sensory garden was given a good tidy up at today's task day and the same was done to one of the large shrub beds near to the stocks. It's great to see the park springing into lift with lots of colour starting to appear. We decided where to locate our final ground sculptures, the apple and pear and also sorted out the location of the new memorial benches that will be sited near to the Boules Court.
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Only the die-hards braved the early morning drizzle today, when the main task was to rearrange one of the beds near to the council offices and the car park by pruning and moving the shrubs at the front to the back and removing brambles. We also did a bit of hoeing around the newly planted War Memorial Beds and made a start on tidying up the Sensory Garden. The new Memorial Beds are looking good and we are looking forward to seeing them mature. Also looking good is the Breathing Places woodland behind the library, where the crocuses are kicking off their spring display in spectacular fashion.
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