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.
Today the park hosted the fifth Annual Treasure Hunt organised in partnership with local estate agent Julian Wadden. The weather held for the best part of the day and it was great to see so many children and families enjoying the park again.
5th Annual Treasure Hunt
This year's Treasure Hunt was an incredible success, raising £2,697 for the park. A huge thank you to Julian Wadden Estate Agents and our volunteer Diane Jackson, who does such an amazing job engaging with local businesses to raise sponsorship and raffle prizes for this brilliant event, which is growing in popularity each year. For a full report on this year's Treasure Hunt and details of the businesses who supported it, please take a look at our 2019 Treasure Hunt Report.
Task day volunteers...
A good turnout by volunteers and those not directly involved in the Treasure Hunt worked hard on the main flowerbeds, in the Bandroom Garden and on painting metal fixtures and fittings throughout the park, including the library handrails.
We also put out a large number of surplus pots around the war memorial and gave them away for free (but asked for donations). A fantastic £40 was left in our donation bucket, which was added to the Treasure Hunt total.
Today's task day looked like being rained off but we were keen to do the last day of "Little Growers" and Marple Library staff came to our aid and kindly allowed us to set up inside. So a very big thank you to them! The first stage of Little Growers is now finished and we look forward to welcoming back the children in a few months time to plant the fruits of their success.
Meanwhile, outside it wasn't actually as bad as we expected most of the time and we managed to get work done in the Band Room garden, the Jubilee Bed and lots of dead-heading of daffodils throughout the park. We also tested out the new petrol lawn mower donated to us by a local resident. It will certainly come in handy at times, although cutting the grass is a task we prefer to leave to the council so we will use it sparingly.
As there were no photos taken during our Task Day on Saturday 13 April we've included a few showing the fantastic colours in the park at the moment. Volunteers worked hard on the flowerbeds, litter picking and on the tree sculpture behind the library.
Little Growers was running again too and visitors to the park popped over £11 in our collection bucket, so thank you!
Our Task Day scheduled for 16 March was rained off, so it was good to get some sunshine this weekend!
On Friday 29th we worked with Greenspace Project Officer Wayne Bardsley to repair the fence at the entrance to the park next to Lock 12. This had been broken in the winter by fallen branches - repaired by us - and then broken again by vandals after they helped the large post reached the end of it useful life by breaking it off and chucking it in the canal. Greenspace provided all the materials needed for the job and with a brand new main post hopefully this will last a good few years now.
On Saturday 30th we were mainly focused on the flowerbeds once again, which are sprouting fresh new colours in every direction. We also launched this year's "Little Growers" scheme, where we invite children to plant a seed, take it home to nurture and then bring it back to plant in the park once it has grown. We had over 20 little visitors, so this year we're off the a great start. We will be repeating this on Saturday 13 and Saturday 27 April too.
We also had a clear-out of our store and put out some free pots for people to help themselves. With donations for these, from Little Growers and from Park Visitors we ended up with just over £35 in our collection bucket.
Wow, isn't the park looking fantastic after a few days of beautiful weather! The crocuses are spectacular!
We had a great turnout for our second task day of the year and everyone was soon stripped down to t-shirts in the sunshine.
Work was mostly focused on weeding and tidying the flowerbeds but we also spread lots of wood chippings on the bandroom borders and the council office shrub beds. We also picked litter and emptied the bins, which were overflowing due to the park being so busy, and rescued sections of vandalised fencing that had been thrown into the canal.
Great comments from visitors to the park and over £24 was added to park funds thanks to donations in our collection bucket.
In 2018 we held 24 task days, working over 1,000 volunteer hours and it was great to get our 2019 season underway.
After clearing glass, a banister rail and a beer barrel (empty unfortunately) from the park we started bashing saplings that had self-seeding in the woodland walk area while others worked on tidying flowerbeds and shrub beds throughout the park.
We began maintenance in the Infants Play Area, where some shrubs have been over-growing the play area surface.
We also did the usual litter-picking and removed the wreaths from around the War Memorial.
Less pleasant was having to remove lots of dog mess from in and around the flowerbeds before we could begin work on them.
Visitors to the park seemed happy to see us back too and kindly deposited over £25 in our collection bucket. Thank you!
