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 Days 3 & 11 November 2017
We squeezed in a quick ad-hoc task day on Friday 3rd November in order to catch-up with planting of bulbs provided by the council. On this occasion we planted daffodils in the Bandroom Garden and Snowdrops in the Infants Play Area.
On Armistice Day we returned to the park to ensure it was looking its best for the Remembrance Sunday Service on the following day. The council's parks team had done a lot of leaf clearing earlier in the week and this left us to focus on clearing and tidying the main flowerbeds and the memorial beds. Of course we observed the 2 minutes silence with other park visitors too at 11am. We also had time to plant a further 5,000 crocus bulbs provided by New Mills, Marple and District Rotary to commemorate the International Rotary campaign to eradicate Polio across the world. The purple crocuses were planted in circles within the Infants Play Area to represent the purple spot placed on children's foreheads when they are vaccinated against Polio in places like India. These extra crocuses complement those provided by Stockport Rotary and planted in September and take the total number of extra bulbs added in the park by the Friends Group this year to almost 15,000.
Our collection bucket was out this weekend and donations from the public of over £27 were gratefully received.
Task Day 28 October 2017
Mostly planting of bulbs supplied by the council's Greenspace team today, including daffodils and narcissi, bluebells, tete-a-tete, hyacinths and snowdrops. Once we'd planted bulbs along the shrub bed between the library and the bandroom we started spreading woodchip donated by a local tree surgeon who had been working in the park.
We didn't put our collection bucket out today because it was so damp and dreary but one of the Co-Op volunteers came along with more than £60 in change donated by their customers, which more than made up for it.
We were treated to a carrot cake birthday cake during our tea break too, plus a cheeky trip to Oldknow's once we'd finished.
Task Day 14 October 2017
Time for a good tidy-up in our lock-up store! We started spreading the leaf mould we've been collecting over the last couple of years around the War Memorial beds after giving them a good tidy too. Attention was also given to the main flowerbeds and shrub beds around the offices. We put out some gardening magazines for the public to help themselves to and as ever they were generous with donations totalling over £20 in our bucket.
Task Day 30 September 2017
A damp day didn't deter a hard-core of volunteers from a busy morning grafting in the park.
The main task today was planting 5,000 Crocuses provided to us by the Rotary Club of Stockport. They were planted in two trenches across the front of the Infants Play Area, so next spring we should be treated to a band of purple to commemorate the Rotary Club's battle to eradicate Polio across the world. Thank you Stockport Rotary!
We also added some extra gravel to the Sensory Garden provided by the council and had a good tidy-up of the Jubilee flowerbed outside the library in preparation for repairs to the coping.
With the damp weather we didn't put our collection bucket out today but still came away with just over £27 for the park from our collection box at the Co-Op. This was brought along by two of their volunteers working in the community.
Task Day 16 September 2017
We started early and finished early with no tea and cake break today so that we could all head off to the Marple Food and Drink Festival for lunch. Before departing we did a big litter-pick, planted a new privet in the hedge around the bowling green, did some heavy pruning in the Hollins House flowerbeds and more maintenance of the park flowerbeds too. A lone volunteer from the Allotment Team was also found grafting on their bed.
Yesterday we also managed to complete treatment of the last of the benches for 2017.
As usual, park users showed their appreciation of our efforts by popping just over £13 in our donations bucket.
Task Day 26 August 2017
Glorious weather and a great turn-out for a Bank Holiday weekend! It was lovely to see the Breathing Places Reading Circle we created 10 years ago, and still maintain, being used by young families with children enjoying a sing-song. There was lots of hard work in flowerbeds and shrub beds and the Allotment Association were out in force too. There was also lots of hard work on park benches as we've been catching up now that the weather has improved.
Lots of litter-picking too, with our chief litter-picker bringing a couple of apprentices with him to train-up.
Plenty of generous park users were out and about as well, with almost £24 placed in our donations bucket.
