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.
Hard working Marple volunteers continued their good work in the park with multiple tasks including hedge and shrub trimming, bulb planting, bench treating, flowerbed maintenance, picking up leaves, litter and dog mess.
It was a glorious day in the park and passers-by donated almost £12 in our collection bucket, thank you!
Volunteers braved the rain that continued in fits and starts throughout today's session with work on the main flowerbeds, the library bed and toilet bed. A good dose of pruning back was also carried out at the Garth Road shrub bed too. General litter picking and clearing of dog mess from around the War Memorial and flowerbeds was also unfortunately necessary. The park was much quieter than normal due to the weather but visitors still managed to pop more than £5 in our collection bucket.
It was good to note that repair to the edges of the safe surfaces in the Junior Play Area is currently underway and we should soon have that new roundabout we campaigned for earlier in the year.
Our first task day using power tools was another productive day, as we tried out our brand new standard and long-reach petrol-driven hedge trimmers. It's taken a long time to get to this stage but it should make many tasks much easier.
While some played with new toys, others were grafting hard to keep the flowerbeds in great shape. We received lots of wonderful and encouraging comments about them and park users dropped nearly £25 in our donation bucket to show their appreciation. Work on park benches and litter-picking too means that the park is still looking its best thanks to Marple volunteers.
It's been two years since the Friends Group first offered to venture outside of the park and refurbish the benches on Market Street, Derby Way and other areas of the Town Centre. With the main obstacles of power-tools and risk assessment training finally overcome, we are now at last in a position to be able to do this work whilst covered by the council's insurance.
Trial bench completed
After a prolonged campaign, lobbying the council to help us get into this position, we're delighted to have completed our first trial bench at long last on Sunday 23 August. This is the one on Market Street, near to the NatWest Bank, and we hope that people who see it will agree that it's a huge improvement. You can see the transformation in the photos below:
Why do a trial bench?
The objective of doing a trial bench was to show people what we could do and also to learn for ourselves how easy or difficult the task would be. We learned a great deal while doing this first bench and would now like to tackle the remainder with our trained volunteers, however, there is now the issue of funding to tackle. We don't feel that funds raised for the park should be used to refurbish all of the town centre benches.
Funding needed to tackle the rest of the benches
So we now need to find some funds to allow us to get stuck into the remaining benches. We need to cover the cost of sanding materials, paint, brushes, preservative, fuel (for our generator), replacement tools and maintenance costs for the next couple of years (we will need to treat them at least once a year to keep them looking their best).
We are hoping that local shops and businesses will be prepared to sponsor the refurbishment of a bench near to their premises. We are proposing that a donation of £100 will cover the refurbishment of one bench plus ongoing maintenance for two years. We can also offer an option where the sponsor can pay to have a plaque fitted to the bench they have sponsored. This will increase the cost to £160 to include the provision of a plaque saying "Sponsored by Your Business, refurbished by Friends of Memorial Park", just like the one below, which can be seen on one of the refurbished benches near to the park entrance:
Any surplus funds left over will be used by the Friends for improvements to Marple Memorial Park.
Get in touch if you want to help us smarten up Marple Town Centre!
If your local business would like to sponsor the refurbishment of a Town Centre Bench outside your premises, please get in touch with Mark Whittaker or Patrick O'Herlihy of Friends of the Park.
A productive day as a dozen volunteers beavered away in the park weeding beds and paths, planting new plants and shrubs, treating benches and sculptures, trimming hedges and shrubs and picking up litter and dog mess. Marple Allotment Association were out in force too. We had our donation bucket out and also gave away some tiny potted Christmas trees for kids to grow on. Generous park users contributed over £16 to our gardening fund. It's good to be appreciated, thank you!
Glorious weather for this weekend's task day and mostly all hands to the shrub bed near to the Bowling Green, which we hadn't realised was quite so overgrown! Other tasks included treatment of benches and sculptures, planting in the Garth Road shrub bed, weeding and leveling of the French Boules Court, a few plants added to the flowerbeds, litter picking throughout the park and, frustratingly, picking up quite a lot of dog mess!
It was good to chat with new local councillor Annette Finnie, who was very complimentary about the efforts of our volunteers, and several other park users too. One chap returned after talking to us with a huge bag of copper coins. We've still to count this yet but other members of the public donated nearly £8 in our bucket too.