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.
Time to take the decorations down!
Installing and removing the Nativity Sculptures on Market Street has become our traditional task for the end of each year and start of the new.
This morning we had to chuckle at the aviator sunglasses Mary was wearing when we turned up to take them back into storage.
The Park is ready for Remembrance Sunday
We had a great turnout of volunteers to help put the final touches to preparations of the park for this year's Remembrance Sunday Service.
Thank you to the park visitors who deposited over £25 in our collection bucket!
Thanks also to Hollins of Marple for the donation of a wheelbarrow full of perennial plants for the park flowerbeds!
Getting ready for Remembrance
Over the next couple of task days we'll be focussed on getting the park ready for Remembrance. Our volunteers were busy on the main flowerbeds this task day but our regular cameraman was absent. So we are delighted to share a couple of photos taken by one of the Totally Local Company operatives recently on an atmospheric early morning.
This is a great opportunity to say thank you to the operatives at the sharp-end whose efforts often complement our own!
A special treat from The Coffee Bean Dream!
Today's special treat for volunteers attending our task day was free coffee or tea at break-time provided by The Coffee Bean Dream. Friends of the Park believe Sarah and her friendly young staff are a fantastic asset to the park and Sarah is very supportive of what we do. We hope the community will help us support them by buying their drinks and treats when using the park.
Of course we did do some work to earn our break!
Today we did some work re-levelling and tamping the new surface created under the picnic benches in the Infants Play Area recently. At the moment this isn't compacting and settling the way it was expected and we've started a dialogue with the council to work out the best solution. We finished pruning one of the large shrub beds and worked on the war memorial beds too.
We also had to cut-off a padlock that had stopped working, clear a gutter and down-pipe on the former bowling pavilion and fill in a whole dug by dogs in the middle of the park that was pointed out to us by a park user. One job we didn't do ourselves but instigated with the council is the rebuilding of the small war memorial in the park. We're very please indeed with the job they've done and it's great to see it finished before Remembrance activities get underway for this year.
A productive task day tinged with sadness
In many ways it was a normal and productive day for Friends of the Park volunteers but one tinged with sadness caused by disheartening vandalism to a much-loved mature tree in the park by persons unknown. We clearly share that sadness with young people who use the park and felt compelled to publish a public statement about the criminal damage caused to the white Birch tree near to Lock 11. It's important to us to make sure local people do not think it was Friends of the Park volunteers who carried out this despicable act.
In terms of work done, we dismantled the remaining School Gardens bed created by All Saints' School and relocated most of the soil to what will become our new raised allotment bed. We also did a lot of tidying-up to the Reading Circle behind the library and some shrub-tidying at the Bandroom Garden. Later, we went and tidied up the branches left strewn around the woodland by the vandals and created some potential wildlife habitats. It was during this activity that we discovered posters left by young people who have been saddened too.
Hedge-trimming and new raised beds on the agenda
Friends of the Park were busy in the park again today, and with hedge trimming at the Band Room a little bit overdue we were delighted with the performance of our new battery-powered hedge cutters purchased with our Stockport CAN Fund Award back in May this year. Volunteers also got stuck into maintenance of the main flowerbeds, which are now starting to turn.
As autumn approaches it's also time to begin dismantling the School Gardens and St. Mary's responded very quickly to our request to remove plants, so theirs was the first to go. All plants are being reused by the schools and we have plans for the backing boards to reappear in the park soon. We are also recycling the timber and sleepers at the allotment bed in front of Hollins House. This follows on from Marple Allotment Association giving up the beds after more than 10 years. So we are planning to give them a boost by creating raised vegetable beds at the rear.
Infants Play Area picnic bench tops
On Friday, following the great work done by AstraZeneca to create hard-standings under the benches, we installed one of the picnic bench top that we've had in our store for a while. The first one is a little town-scape that is perfect for toy vehicles. The second, which should be installed soon, is a bit more educational.
The tops have been funded by our 50-50 Club and we hope that families with young children enjoy them.
Thank you to Park Users who popped over £18 in our collection bucket!