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 stunning Remembrance Day in Memorial Park!
The park was beautiful in the early mist this morning, which was burned away by glorious sunshine in time for 11am. There were lots of people in the park for the two minutes silence and we orchestrated this informally using a recording of The Last Post and Reveille that was quite moving, despite the (insert your own word) talking through it on his phone.
In terms of tasks today, we planted several hundred bulbs supplied by the council behind the benches overlooking the Bowling Green, did some work in the Infants Play Area, picked litter and put the finishing touches to our preparations for the Remembrance Sunday Service tomorrow. We always like the park to look its very best and we've been well assisted in this aim by TLC's park maintenance operatives too, who have also put in a lot of extra work during the past week. We thank them for their efforts on this.
After tea break we headed down to the Lock 10 entrance to dismantle some large branches that someone had dragged into the park from the canal.
Remembrance is approaching and we like the park to look its best!
Today we focused on tidying the main flowerbeds and edging the paths on the approaches to the war memorial as we head towards the month of Remembrance. We also added topsoil to the Sensory Garden opposite the Scout Hut and did a litter-pick around the park. It's clear some park visitors are picking litter too, and we thank you for that!
We met with Zoe from Marple Mutual Aid for a photo shoot at the Covid memorial and you will hopefully see an article about this in the Marple Review soon.
Boules court maintenance is underway too
We also had an inbetweenie task day recently to begin overdue maintenance on the French Boules Court - it looks like we have a big job breaking out with tired sleepers!
A beautiful autumnal morning allowed us to crack on with park maintenance
Tasks today included transferring new topsoil to the Band Room garden, a good tidy-up of the allotment beds, plus regular maintenance on the main beds and war memorial beds.
Due to the amount of rain over the last few days it was too wet to treat benches but our dedicated bench volunteer wasn't lost for a job and got stuck into tidying bases instead.
Outdoor Exercise Equipment
We are sure many of you will be wondering what's happening with our outdoor exercise equipment project. Installation should have been completed a couple of weeks ago but unfortunately the Mag Bells unit was installed incorrectly. Thankfully we spotted this before tarmacking and work was stopped for investigations. The Mag Bells unit has now been removed and gone off-site for refurbishment. We understand it is due to return soon and then the final stages of the works can be completed and everything will be ready to use.
Great to have two new volunteers join us as we begin to focus on getting ready for Remembrance
We turned our attention mostly back to the main flowerbeds and war memorial beds as Remembrance seems to be coming at us rather fast this year! Other work included our regular maintenance at the Band Room garden, sanding and treating benches, and cutting up of a large fallen branch in the canal-side woodland to create some extra wildlife habitat.
Thank you to park visitors who popped almost £30 in our collection bucket!
Today we strayed outside the park again to Oldknow Gardens
As many local people will know, Friends of the Park have maintained the Lock 17 bed since it was created way back in 2007.
There have been repairs ongoing next to the bed by a CRT contractor for many months and we were keen to get the bed sorted now that they've gone.
We had a good tidy up and mowed around the bed but we were very disappointed to discover what a poor job CRT's contractor has made of tidying up after themselves and how much rubbish they have left behind. We are very surprised CRT accept such slovenliness from their contractors.
We understand the council are meeting with the contractor on Friday and we hope this gets sorted quickly.
Today our volunteers were mostly melting and had to finish early!
A lower turnout than usual due to holidays meant we were spread a bit thin and it was a little too warm to get very much done. Despite the growing heat we managed a to mow the band room garden and triangle, do some strimming, tidy the circular bed, the allotment beds and the wildflower bed too. When you say it quickly it sounds quite a lot!
Earlier this week we also took advantage of a cooler morning to fit some new nets to the basketball hoops with hooks the recently council fitted for us.
