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 15 July 2023
We stayed mostly dry and only had to shelter from the rain a couple of times!
A disappointing start to this task day was the discovery that someone has placed horse-muck around the vandalised tree at Lock 11. We've cleared this up and reported the act to local councillors, the council and police with a warning that it appears to be another action with malevolent intent towards the young people who use the area.
We managed to mow the band room garden and triangle before the rain came. We also weeded the new wildflower bed, which is starting to show some positive signs, worked on the main beds and did a litter-pick and some sweeping in the Infants Play Area. Park use was quite due to the weather but we still had £12 in our bucket by the end of the day.
It's good to see the bed behind the toilet block is recovering after the council's contractor trashed it last year but wish they hadn't painted those dark brown patches!
Task Day 24 June 2023
Park visitors were generous with their comments and pockets
Tasks today involved finishing work on the section of shrubbery alongside Hollins House that we started last time, the regular maintenance work on the Bandroom Garden and continuing the endless maintenance work on the main flowerbeds. This included edging the beds, tidying the paths, weeding and planting new additions.
We also fitted an edging frame to the artwork on the gable end of the Bowlers Hut that we hope will stop the winter weather from getting into them for a while.
It was a very good day for the park bucket with visitors making many positive comments and depositing over £40, thank you!
Task Day 10 June 2023
These sunny days are wonderful but the park is desperate for rain!
Watering is a time-consuming job even though we try to limit this as much as possible. We normally only do things freshly planted, the allotment beds, Danny's pots and, more recently, our new wildflower bed. Unfortunately the hot weather is now stressing a lot of the new trees in the park, so we did as many of these as we could too in the hope that we don't loose them.
Other tasks today included the never-ending weeding of the flowerbeds, mowing of the band room garden and triangle, tidying around Hollins House and some weeding in the library woodland, where we did manage to find a little shade. We also had our hottest team on the annual make-over of the French Boules Court, which was a challenging task in this weather.
It was good to see Helen Middleton braving the heat to work on the final stages of the Skatepark Art Project too.
Task Day 3 June 2023
We squeezed in a special Task Day to finish our experimental wildflower bed
A small group of volunteers were at the park today to complete the wildflower bed started during the Treasure Hunt Task Day last weekend.
As many people will know, our first attempt at a large wildflower meadow in the park a couple of years ago wasn't very successful.
So this time we've down-scaled to a more manageable size so that we can experiment to find out what works best before trying to do something so big again.
The bed has been cleared and planted with Yellow Rattle plugs grown at home by our volunteers. We've also sown seed today, including some that was supplied to us by Cheshire Wildlife Trust, who have also given us the Pollinator Patch stickers too. We've staked and roped it off in the hope that visitors to the park will stay off the bed and keep their dogs off too please.
Task Day / Treasure Hunt 27 May 2023
A wonderful day for a Family Treasure Hunt!
We were focused mainly on our Treasure Hunt today but volunteers still found time to mow the Band Room garden, the long-grass triangle and do a litter-pick. However, the main task of the day for those who weren't handing out programmes and chocolates, or selling raffle tickets and sowing seeds with Little Growers, was clearing of the bed just next to our stall. This was adopted by the Scouts last year but by mutual agreement we've taken it back and plan to use it as an experimental wildflower bed. It was back-breaking work but they did it!
The Treasure Hunt was a great success financially and everyone seemed to enjoy it and gave great feedback too.
We're still waiting for some of the money to come in, so we'll give a full update on the Treasure Hunt Page when the dust settles. We do know that we raised £382 on the raffle, £64.50 thanks to Marple Youth Project's Cake Sale, £20 selling cards, £25 selling jewellery and £161 in donations. So with the £2,516 of sponsorship received so far we've achieved a wonderful £3,169!
Task Day 13 May 2023
A glorious day in the park!
We couldn't ask for better weather for a task day and it was great to see Helen transferring the children's artwork to the skatepark ramps in the sunshine.
It was an arty day all round as we also installed the centenary artwork created by All Saints' and St Mary's Schools last year for the School Gardens Project. They've been fitted to the Bowlers' Hut gable end and we're really pleased to have found a way to brighten up this area following a suggestion made to us by PC Matthew Mayers.
We continued work on the main flowerbeds and memorial beds, did a litter-pick, cleaned the war memorial and maintained the Band Room garden. We also fitted a "hazard bar" to the chain across the entrance barrier to the park. This is to make it more visible after a recent accident involving a mobility scooter when, thankfully, nobody was hurt.
Last but not least, park visitors may notice that the softwood timbers from the stocks made for us way back in 2004 by Tony Heginbotham have gone missing. There's no need to worry, these have lasted nearly 20 years but are now rotten and one of our volunteers is making new hardwood replicas that should outlast most of us.
Thank you to park users who donated just over £21 in our collection bucket.
