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 26 March 2022
Park springs back to life during glorious weather
This is probably the earliest we've ever needed to consider applying sunscreen before a task day!
A really busy and productive day saw our volunteers cleaning under the former Bowling Pavilion canopy ready for painting before we install our centenary artwork later in the year. We also chopped up a huge tree branch that had been brought down by high winds earlier in the year and created a small wildlife haven from the arisings. Many other volunteers got stuck into flowerbed maintenance behind the library, in the Jubilee bed in front of the library, the toilet block bed, and of course the main flowerbeds and memorial beds.
We also got started on annual maintenance such as painting the edges of the steps at the Bowling Green the exact same colour as the fabulous display of daffodils throughout the park.
You may notice that we now have a new flag flying from our second flagpole as a display of our support for the people of Ukraine.
Last but not least, thank you to park visitors, who kindly popped over £17 in our collection bucket.
Task Day 26 February 2022
Reading Circle make-over and Frog planting
During today's task day most of our volunteers focused on a good tidy-up of the Reading Circle behind the library, including planting-up of the trough in our new Canal Frog Rose. We hope that visitors will enjoy this new addition to the park but please refrain from climbing on it and trampling the plants.
Other activities included a big clear-up of broken branches and twigs from recent storms, extensive litter-picking and glass clearing thanks to our overnight park visitors, a tidy-up of the annoying mud puddle at the park entrance and installation of the boards for our new Pavilion Art Project Phase II - look out for more on that soon.
Great support from the community
A very big thank you to the lady who donated £100 to Friends of the Park and the kind gentleman who presented us with a cake from Archer's for our tea break. It was very nice indeed!
Task Day 29 January 2022
First formal task day of 2022!
It was great to get our volunteers back into the park for the first time this year, despite nearly getting blown away by high winds.
Today's efforts were focused on a general tidy of of the main flowerbeds. We spread some new top soil on the Sensory Garden opposite the Scout Hut as part of our tidy-up there and replanted Danny Winter's pots too. We also spread some top soil along the top edge of the skatepark to fill the gap between the concrete and grass that had been developing.
Task Day 13 December 2021
Installation of Nativity Sculptures on Market Street
It's become a traditional way for Friends of Marple Memorial Park to end the year and it's now an annual task for us to install and remove the Nativity Sculptures in the Town Centre.
We took over the task of storing and managing the sculptures from Churches Together, who were having trouble handling them when stored at All Saints' Church. It's much easier for us to keep them at the park and we can transport them to Market Street without vehicles, so much greener too!
It was great fun to supervise our team of volunteers as they did their community service this morning!
Task Day 23 October 2021
Getting ready for the Ride of Remembrance
On Sunday 24th October the Marple Poppy Appeal Team will launch this year's campaign by commemorating the 100th year of the Royal British Legion Poppy Appeal. They are doing this with a Ride of Remembrance from Compstall to Memorial Park featuring 100 motorbikes each carrying a large poppy to be added to the Wall of Remembrance in the park.
This promises to be a great spectacle and Friends of the Park spent this task day tidying the flowerbeds and war memorial area in preparation for the event tomorrow. We also planted the last of the shrubs donated to us by a local resident, which led to a great photo of our father and daughter volunteer team, who have done a wonderful job for us over the last year.
Visitors to the park kindly donated over £15 in our collection bucket, thank you!
However, to the lady who came up and told one of our volunteers that you had put £1 in the bucket but you would give more if Friends of the Park disassociated ourselves with the skatepark, we will be passing your money onto the Poppy Appeal. The park is for everyone and we are very proud of our success in building this great facility for the young people of Marple.
Last but not least, as you will see below, our intrepid painter was out and about again, this time with his pot of white paint!
Task Day 9 October 2021
At last we're allowed back in our Mess Room!
The refurbishment of our Mess Room (shared with council operatives) was completed just before the March 2020 lockdown began but we've been unable to use it since then. After conducting a deep clean yesterday afternoon, during this task day we finally managed to fit the new paper towel dispenser and microwave brackets we purchased before the pandemic kicked off. As the room is quite small we used it to brew-up but took our refreshments outside.
Other work included finishing the black paintwork around around Marple Library, litter-picking and the never-ending battle to keep the flowerbeds looking their best. This time we also planted a couple of shrubs donated by a Marple resident and we look forward to seeing how they develop next spring.
Honesty Seeds for Sale
As a little fund-raiser we also sold packs of White Honesty seeds to raise funds for the park. This was inspired by so many people asking us for the name of the plants giving the amazing display of white flowers in the flowerbeds during May and June this year (see below). Along with donations, we raised over £27 for the park.
