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 13 April 2013
The weather gods must be on our side as they saved the best of the weekend's sunshine for our task day today.
It was a very good turn out with volunteers doing lots of work on the flowerbeds including the War Memorial beds, the Shuttle Stone bed, the Toilet Block bed and the two next to the council offices near to the car park. Pruning was also carried out to the shrub beds on the other side of the council offices too.
The Allotment Association were in attendance and continued the development of their newly adopted fruit, veg, herb and flower garden with the planting of a pair of apple trees. This is going to be a fascinating new feature in the park this summer. The Association are hoping visitors will pull out weeds in the bed while passing and take a small amount of produce as a reward.
Meanwhile, our team of intrepid bench restorers tackled a new project sponsored by a donation from Marple Area Committee to refurbish the picnic benches down at the Recreation Ground. These substantial benches, sponsored by Marple Civic Society and the Macnair Trust in 1990 have been the worse for wear and vandalism for a while now and Area Committee have paid for timber to refurbish the bench tops and seats. One bench was completed today and the other will be done soon. The original plaques will be cleaned up and replaced in the near future too.
Back in the park, our new jet wash was tested by giving Midnight the Owl Tree Sculpture a good hose-down to remove all the green before being treated with preservative next time.
Task Day 30 March 2013
With some decent weather at last we were pleased to welcome Marple and District Allotment Association to the Park. The Association has taken over the flowerbed previously maintained by the Rainbows and soon set about making it their own by clearing and forking it over, hoeing in 5lb of Growmore and then planting Gooseberry, Blueberry and Red and White Current bushes. As the sign they installed says, the Association plan to turn the bed into a mini vegetable plot that will include herbs, flowers, vegetables and fruit. We are really looking forward to seeing this new project develop over the coming months.
Whilst the Allotment Association toiled over their bed the Friends group set about pruning Dogwood and other trees and shrubs throughout the park and also installing the new display panel for the Diamond Jubilee Flowerbed near to the library. The display explains the background and inspiration for the bed and acknowledges the local community groups that contributed to this community project to commemorate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee that was started last year.
Task Day 23 February 2013
The main task today was planting up the Diamond Jubilee Flowerbed with 800 Polyanthus purchased from our funds - it looked like there were too many at the start but they ended up a perfect fit.
We also cleared the gravel out of the narrow strip alongside the car park - we installed this last year but it has proved to be a bad idea because it was always getting kicked everywhere by the kids. So it's back to the drawing board for this mini-project to make the ugly strip look better.
It was great to be joined by some of Marple's Firefighters - who have recently won a special award for their community involvement - and they helped us plant the Polyanthus, remove the gravel and do some pruning near to the Senior Citizens' Hall. We are hopeful that they will come to more of our task days in the future.
Task Day 26 January 2013
The Friends of the Park end of January task day was abandoned due to the weather apart from two steadfast, loyal, dedicated, brave and hardy fellows:
These were Terry and Patrick, who did a first rate job of fitting a new bracket to repair one of the Senior Citizens' benches near to the Bowling Green where the cast iron had cracked, resulting in one of the slats breaking away.
"These tough men will stop at nothing!!" (their words).
Patrick has also been successful in persuading the Co-Op to paint yellow strips on the steps between the park and the Co-Op car park - so a big "well done" to him for that too.
Task Day 5 January 2013
We had to abandon our last task day of 2012 scheduled for 29 December due to the awful weather but enthusiastic volunteers decided to squeeze an extra one in to replace it this week and that was much more successful. Tasks included clearing out the remaining bedding from the Jubilee Bed and transplanting some of them to the Toilet bed. Clearing brambles and weeds from the bed to the side of the library and removing the grass and weeds from between the paving and brickwork in front of the library. Work was also done in the Breathing Places behind the library.
The chains securing the recently refurbished Senior Citizens' Bench near the Bowling Green were reconnected - thanks to The Marple Plumber for doing this for us.
Also we were very pleased to be able to complete the refurbishment of the second bench near to the Co-Op steps. This one was kindly sponsored by All Things Nice, the Marple Coffee House and Deli on Church Lane.
Task Day 24 November 2012
The good news on this task day was that we completed the installation of the second bowling green bench sponsored by Marple Senior Citizens and refurbished by Friends of the Park, which means that all three of the large cast iron benches around the bowling green have now been done. The first of the three having been sponsored by Marple Business Forum earlier in the year.
The bad news is that it has become clear that someone is stealing plants and shrubs from the park that have been donated by the public, or paid for by donations and planted by us. A beautiful new Black Alder, a Sambuca and two small Broom bushes recently planted have been taken from the War Memorial Beds. Hostas have been taken from near the library and a variety of small plants taken from the ornamental beds. We are both saddened and angered by this. It seems to us that the culprit or culprits must be keen gardeners who understand the efforts we are making to improve the park flower beds yet find it acceptable to steal from the community they live in.
If you see anyone working in the flowerbeds who are not wearing the blue uniform of SSK please take a photo of them on your phone. If it's a volunteer from the Friends of the Park they will smile and talk to you. If they are stealing plants they probably won't! Send the photo to us and we will do our best to ensure that they are prosecuted. If you see, or have any information about these thefts, please get in touch with us.