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.
A sad task today was to remove part of our Midnight tree sculpture that was becoming unsafe.
We created this wonderful addition to the park in 2007, when the tree from which it is carved was declared unsafe. It was great to bring something positive from the demise of this mature Copper Beech that has lasted more than 10 years but unfortunately as the carving was still rooted in the ground in the long-term its decay was inevitable. We have asked Myers Tree Care to remove the rest of it as soon as they can and we hope to find a way to replace it with something new in the future.
Other tasks included lots of work on the park's flowerbeds, the addition of paving slabs in front of one of the skatepark seats to create a hard-standing and work in the Bandroom garden. We also ventured outside of the park today to begin repainting the Lock 17 gates. This is another local feature that we helped to create in 2007 and is now maintained by our volunteers.
Back in the park, visitors dropped just over £15 into our collection bucket to in appreciation of our efforts.
It was great to see kids playing on our latest addition to the park - the new Ocean See-Saw in the Infants Play Area.
Read more about the creation of Midnight the Tree Sculpture.
Too damp for painting the Infants Play Area fence this time, so most of our volunteers got stuck into a tidy-up of the Breathing Places Reading Circle behind the library.
There was also some hedge trimming done at the Bandroom cottage and maintenance of park benches continued. Later on we also managed to get a coat of gloss on the Bowling Pavilion doors. Looks like we had the best of the Bank Holiday weather for our efforts!
Thank you to generous park visitors, who popped just over £17 into our collection bucket.
Today the weather was just about perfect and we had a much more successful painting day and managed to make a decent amount of progress on the Infants Play Area fence.
Still a long way to go though! Other volunteers worked on the main flowerbeds, litter picking and the treatment and maintenance of park benches continued too.
Park visitors popped just over £13 into our collection bucket to say thank you for our efforts to keep the park looking its best.
Today's planned "big task" was to get stuck into painting the Infants Play Area fence but although we made a nominal start the wind forced us to stop and do something else.
More successful tasks included planting and maintenance in the Sensory Garden and the Scout Hut bed, strimming in the Bandroom garden and ongoing treatment of benches. The benches that have had the metalwork repainted are looking particularly good.
Thank you to park visitors, who showed support for our efforts by placing almost £8 in our donation bucket!
We were all over the place on our task day today!
Volunteers worked on the Jubilee Bed near the library, the main flowerbeds, the entrance to the park down by the cinema, the bandroom garden, on benches throughout the park and on the pavilion store. At one point we even had a volunteer clearing the drain in the car park and recovering three buckets of soil!
We are often told that the park looks better than it ever has and it's great to know that what we do is appreciated. Generous park users confirmed this by donating over £17 towards the upkeep of the park in our roving collection bucket.
Friends of the Park were delighted to be involved in the organisation of Open Gardens in Marple.
During the two days of the event we had an information point in the park, where we sold tickets, ran a raffle and talked to visitors about the open gardens and about our work in the park. It was a huge success and we were very pleased to play our part in raising an amazing £11,500 for Cancer Research UK!
During Open Gardens we took the opportunity to have a dry-run on the installation of 141 knitted poppies on the war memorial railings. This is one poppy for every man on the memorial killed during WWI and will be repeated in November this year for the 100th anniversary of the end of the Great War. Didn't they look wonderful!
