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 28 July 2012
After teasing us early on the weather turned glorious and we had a very productive day. We were delighted that Bramhall Paving Services, our contractor for the hard landscaping works on the Diamond Jubilee Bed, was at last able to start work after prolonged delays waiting for Planning Permission.
While they were busy in front of the library a small number of volunteers tackled refurbishment of one of the Co-Op benches near to the entrance; weeding of the Sensory Garden bed; treatment of the Sensory Garden bench and the Stocks; maintenance in the Breathing Places wildlife area and more planting in the War Memorial beds. After things dried up a bit we were even able to continue painting the Infants Play Area fence!
Task Day 14 & 15 July 2012
More of a task weekend than a task day! On Saturday we made the most of the good weather by treating benches, clearing the library bed ready for landscape works, weeding ornamental and Memorial beds and treating algae on the War Memorial. On Sunday we then transported to the park and installed the first of two benches near the bowling green whose refurbishment has been sponsored by Marple Senior Citizens and carried out by Friends of the Park. The second bench was then dismantled ready for refurbishment too. A third similar bench was sponsored by Marple Business Forum earlier this year.
Task Day 30 June 2012
Thank goodness for better weather that allowed us to make some more progress on the project to paint the Infants Play Area fence. Still a way to go though! We are doing extremely well with our programme to refurbish the park's benches and three of the oldest ones along the main path through the park were sanded and treated in-situ. The newly refurbished bowling green bench was also treated to another coat of preservative too. Lots of work was done in the woodland area behind the library and more new plants donated by Les and Jean White were planted in the War Memorial beds.
Task Day 9 June 2012
Unfortunately it rained so much today that the camera never came out of its case. Quite a few volunteers still turned up and we were able to prune in the shrub beds and crown lift several trees whose branches were getting very low over the main footpath but sadly no photos this time. We also continued management and planting in the woodland area behind the library and everybody got very WET indeed! What a wonderful summer.
Task Day 26 May 2012
Beautiful sunshine meant that we could make good progress on our big painting task and we managed to get approximately half of the outside of the Infants Play Area fence painted cream. Other volunteers made great inroads into some much needed management in the Breathing Places woodland area. In addition, another two wooden benches were stripped, sanded, treated and refitted on the main path through the park. Also the backless bench on the driveway had yet more graffiti removed from it.
Task Day 20 May 2012 (Marple Spring Clean)
As part of "Marple Spring Clean" organised by Marple Business Forum, Friends of Memorial Park were pleased to be joined by volunteers from the local community to begin painting the Infants Play Area fence. This is a pretty big task, it had taken several weeks to get the fence prepared and our volunteers did very well to get all of the inside of the fence painted cream. We even managed to make a start on the outside too. There is quite a lot of work left to do and we plan to tackle this in smaller sections during out normal task days over the coming weeks.
A special thank you to All Saints' Church, who made up the majority of the volunteers working on our "Spring Clean" task.
Photos by Arthur M. Procter