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.
We were blessed with a beautiful day to blow out the Christmas cobwebs on our last task day of the year.
In 2019 we have worked over 1,000 volunteer hours in the park! Today we cut-back overgrown shrubs behind the Infants Play Area, tidied the War Memorial Beds, continued crown-lifting of low branches on trees and cleared leaves around the Bowling Green too.
It was great to see our request to replace the missing drum sticks on the Pirate Ship has been fulfilled by the council too.
Despite a frosty start it turned into a beautiful day just right for planting over 2,000 bulbs with the help of four Duke of Edinburgh Award students. This kept the photographer busy too, so there are not as many pictures of other activities as usual.
Those other activities included filling ruts with soil in the new wildflower meadow area of the park, clearing and tidying the main flowerbeds and the war memorial beds, crown-lifting of trees to remove branches at eye-level, litter-picking throughout the park and lots of work on the Reading Circle behind the library following completion of the hard-standing resurfacing that we paid for.
Planting of bulbs with the students included Bluebells around the new pine trees near to the Skatepark, a Bee-Mix selection in the canalside wildlife area and daffodils planted behind the three old wooden benches along the main path. Of course that included the obligatory conga to tread down the soil and turf on top of the newly planted bulbs. Bee-Mix bulbs were also planting in the Reading Circle woodland and miniature daffodils and crocuses in the war memorial beds by our volunteers too.
While all this was going on the public in the park kindly donated over £17 in our collection bucket to show their appreciation.
Sadly our task day scheduled for Saturday 26 October was rained off, which allowed us watch the Rugby World Cup final but set us back a little on our preparations for Remembrance Sunday.
In order to catch-up and have the War Memorial and flowerbed areas looking the best they could we were also in the park on Tuesday 5th, when we added new commemorative flags and wreaths to the railings, Wednesday 6th and Friday 8th, when our volunteers worked closely with council operatives who were cutting the grass and clearing leaves from the park.
We were also in the park the week before to fix the Poppy Appeal Team's Street Poppies to the lampposts.
On Saturday 9th, as well as putting the finishing touches to the area where the Remembrance Service will take place, we picked litter, cleared leaves from around the library, mowed the lawn in the Band Room garden, trimmed shrubs and bushes around Hollins House and began work on clearing stones and seeding the the top section of the area used by CRT as their compound during the refurbishment of Lock 11. This is a new project that should see a wildflower meadow in the park next summer.
While doing all this we had a large supply of cooking apples for visitors to the park to help themselves and they kindly left over £33 in our collection bucket to show their appreciation of the work our volunteers do.
Happy to Chat Bench
In addition to all this, following creation of the first Marple "Happy to Chat Bench" on Derby Way in September this year, Friends of the Park have now created a second Marple Chat Bench in Memorial Park. Read more about the Marple Happy to Chat Benches on the Marple Website.
The bench chosen is one of the three on the slope overlooking the Bowling Green, which was felt to be a good place for people to stop and talk. As with all "Happy to Chat" benches anywhere in the country, we now need the community's help to make it work. So if you see someone sitting at this bench in the park please make the effort to stop and say "hello".
A smaller than usual band of volunteers today enjoyed a surprise visit from the sunshine.
Unfortunately the park was still so wet that it wasn't possible to work on the flowerbeds without making a mess of the grass, so we focused on litter-picking and clearing weeds from the main entrance to the park, the car park and pathways. We also carried out a gentle crown-lift of branches at eye-level on trees throughout the park.
One of our volunteers spent the morning engaging with visitors to the park about our new 50-50 Club scheme too.
The sun encouraged plenty of visitors to the park, who kindly donated over £43 in our bucket!
A special thank you to the two young lads who joined in to help pick up litter at the skatepark!
We almost cancelled today due to the rain but decided to give it a go. A surprising number of volunteers turned up and we managed to get some work done on the war memorial beds, complete a litter-pick and plant four trees donated by a local resident. However, by tea break the rain was very heavy and seemed set-in for the day, so we retired gracefully but very wet! One of our volunteers also spent the morning engaging with visitors to the library about our new 50-50 Club scheme.
Earlier this week we were delighted to unveil the cobbled setts we've had laid in from of Danny Winter's bench. This small project has been funded by Friends of the Park, with a very generous contribution from Danny's family too.
A quieter turn-out due to the Tour of Britain coming through Marple at lunchtime today. What a beautiful day it was for that too! We broke off from our labours to watch it go down Station Road at amazing speed.
Despite the lower numbers today we still managed to do a good amount of work, including resetting some broken and misaligned slabs in front of a bench, litter-picking, planting in the Jubilee Bed in front of the library, weeding on the main flowerbeds and the application of yellow safety paint to the steps at the Bowling Green.
One of our volunteers also spent the morning engaging with park visitors about our new 50-50 Club scheme and we received lots of positive feedback about what we do for the park. Sign-up before the end of the month to be included in the first draw.
Visitors also showed their support by donating just under £20 in our collection bucket.