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.
Great welcome to Marple Memorial Park for Coffee Bean Dream!
We were pleased to arrive in time to welcome Sarah from Coffee Bean Dream to the park for the first time on our task day today. Coffee Bean Dream will be in the park selling coffee, cakes and many other kinds of refreshments most Saturdays and Sundays going forward. Friends of the Park are hugely supportive of Sarah bringing her business to the park and we can see already that Reddish Vale's loss is Memorial Park's gain. In the photo below Cllr. Malcolm Allan and Angie cut the ribbons on Coffee Bean Dream's first day in the park.
A wonderful day to be working in the park
This was our first mid-month Task Day of 2022 and despite a smaller turnout than our end of month ones we got a great deal of work done. Flowerbeds were weeded, lots of work was done in the Band Room Garden and progress was made on maintaining steps and benches. In particular, the back of the Coronation Bench was given a much needed clean-up and repaint. We also planted our recent purchases from Marple Scouts in the Sensory Bed opposite the Scout Hut for them to enjoy.
We were saddened that vandals have seen fit to destroy 3 new trees near to the Infants Play Area. These were planted by the council at our request and we were watering them regularly to ensure they survived the dry weather. It's hard to understand what motivates anyone to attack our efforts to improve and maintain the park.
Better news is that we remembered to put our collection bucket out this time and park visitors rewarded us by depositing almost £22!
Another busy day in the sun for Friends of the Park
Today's tasks included preparing and seeding the circular bed with wildflowers and doing the same in the borders leading to the Reading Circle behind the library. This is the first time we've done this and we're looking forward to the results. We also worked on the Band Room garden, planted some donated Gunnera, began painting under the former Bowling Pavilion canopy, cleaned up the Toddler's Play Area sign, removed a fallen tree from one of the shrub beds and did lots of watering.
While working on the Reading Circle we were delighted when one of the library staff came out and told us they are planning to use the area for story time as part of the Platinum Jubilee celebrations. We were also pleased to see that replacement of the broken windows on Hollins House is finally underway - it looks so much better!
We forgot to put out our collection bucket this time but you can donate via Localgiving or join our 50-50 Club if you'd like to support us.
Park springs back to life during glorious weather
This is probably the earliest we've ever needed to consider applying sunscreen before a task day!
A really busy and productive day saw our volunteers cleaning under the former Bowling Pavilion canopy ready for painting before we install our centenary artwork later in the year. We also chopped up a huge tree branch that had been brought down by high winds earlier in the year and created a small wildlife haven from the arisings. Many other volunteers got stuck into flowerbed maintenance behind the library, in the Jubilee bed in front of the library, the toilet block bed, and of course the main flowerbeds and memorial beds.
We also got started on annual maintenance such as painting the edges of the steps at the Bowling Green the exact same colour as the fabulous display of daffodils throughout the park.
You may notice that we now have a new flag flying from our second flagpole as a display of our support for the people of Ukraine.
Last but not least, thank you to park visitors, who kindly popped over £17 in our collection bucket.
Reading Circle make-over and Frog planting
During today's task day most of our volunteers focused on a good tidy-up of the Reading Circle behind the library, including planting-up of the trough in our new Canal Frog Rose. We hope that visitors will enjoy this new addition to the park but please refrain from climbing on it and trampling the plants.
Other activities included a big clear-up of broken branches and twigs from recent storms, extensive litter-picking and glass clearing thanks to our overnight park visitors, a tidy-up of the annoying mud puddle at the park entrance and installation of the boards for our new Pavilion Art Project Phase II - look out for more on that soon.
Great support from the community
A very big thank you to the lady who donated £100 to Friends of the Park and the kind gentleman who presented us with a cake from Archer's for our tea break. It was very nice indeed!
First formal task day of 2022!
It was great to get our volunteers back into the park for the first time this year, despite nearly getting blown away by high winds.
Today's efforts were focused on a general tidy of of the main flowerbeds. We spread some new top soil on the Sensory Garden opposite the Scout Hut as part of our tidy-up there and replanted Danny Winter's pots too. We also spread some top soil along the top edge of the skatepark to fill the gap between the concrete and grass that had been developing.
Installation of Nativity Sculptures on Market Street
It's become a traditional way for Friends of Marple Memorial Park to end the year and it's now an annual task for us to install and remove the Nativity Sculptures in the Town Centre.
We took over the task of storing and managing the sculptures from Churches Together, who were having trouble handling them when stored at All Saints' Church. It's much easier for us to keep them at the park and we can transport them to Market Street without vehicles, so much greener too!
It was great fun to supervise our team of volunteers as they did their community service this morning!
