Preparing for the Garden Party and Welcoming New Volunteers

REMINDER - GARDEN PARTY ON 24TH JUNE - LAST CALL FOR CERTIFICATES

There are a lot of people working hard at the moment to make sure that our garden party will be as successful and enjoyable as it can be. We are fast approaching the deadline this week when we will need to order certificates to be printed. If you have not responded already to your invitation or to the email asking if you would like a personal certificate to mark our receipt of the Kings Award for Voluntary Service will you do so within the next 48 hours please or it could be too late. 

TODAY 

On a dry but overcast morning we had a great turnout of 35 volunteers in the park this morning. With a number of our regular volunteers absent this morning we were supplemented by 8 new volunteers. Stephen introduced Elene from the Ukraine for the first time. Wendy came from the Department of Education. Iliana came from RBS. Samia and Vikash joined us from XERO, and Rachel, Zuha, and Zaunah, joined us from various Government Departments. Everybody was made very welcome. 

PLANTS, PLANTS AND MORE PLANTS

We have been extremely lucky this week. On Thursday I had a call from Justin about a windfall of 4 full pallets of summer bedding plants arriving at a distribution warehouse of a charity in Trafford Park. So without delay Allan and I took over an empty car each and filled them both completely with plants.

Picture 1 shows Sonia (who was just passing through the park when we were unloading) helping Allan to water the plants which we stored on the wild flower meadow. Thanks also to MCC support, Tony was able to collect the remaining plants today and deliver them to us in the park.

We also received a delivery today, thanks to Will White, of about 500 geraniums from MCC, as our allocation of summer bedding plants. So we were pretty busy, this moning planting! 

Picture 2 shows the large team (from l to r) of Stephen, Elene, Vickash, Wendy, Joyce, Sonia, Zuha, Zaunah and Rachel who were all working on the flower bed next to Buddy and Lucy. 

Picture 3 shows the team of Julie, Jude, Lucy and trainee volunteer Ned the dog (we must get a better fitting hi-vis vest next week!) planting white geraniums along the Flower Walk. 

Picture 4 shows Iliana who had been working with Jane and Wendy (from DoE) to do a superb weeding and tidying up job on the T bed next to the rockery ready for planting next week. 

Picture 5 shows Joyce and Elene later in the morning topping up the cafe garden with some lovely new colourful bedding plants.

A huge thank you to everyone above who made such a massive improvement in the park today by the introduction of some lovely colourful summer plants.

PREPARATION FOR THE GARDEN PARTY CONTINUES IN THE DNC GARDEN

We once more set up a large team today to work in the garden of the Didsbury Neighbourhood Centre to continue to make improvements in preparation for the garden party.

Picture 6 shows (from l to r) Richard, Steve, Adrian, Ian, Allan, Sandra, Kevin and Carl who all did an amazing job to level off the ground in the garden ready for the new marquee which Jamie tells us will be delivered later this week. Thanks also to Adrian for completing the stage area ready for the presentations. Thank you everyone for working so hard in this area today. It was a great result.

PREPARATION FOR THE DIDSBURY FESTIVAL

The Didsbury Festival takes place in 4 days time. So, the heavy gang took time out today to remove the second set of goal posts from the sports field. This was requested by the Festival organising team. The plan is to re-instate the goals on the other pitch (which has already been re-seeded) next week after the Festival and then re-seed this one. Picture 7 shows the heavy gang at work removing the goal posts. Thank you guys. Great work! 

We are planning to open the wild flower meadow to the public next Saturday during the Festival. Picture 8 shows Tristan working incredibly hard on his hands and knees meticuloulsy removing weeds from around the benches.

On Saturday we will invite the festival goers to enjoy the use the bench facilities around the wild flower meadow and at the same time take the opportunity to promote what we do and encourage donations, membership, and volunteer opportunities. If you have any time to spare on Saturday and could help in any way for a short peiod of time will you kindly let me know or just come along and join in.

On Saturday we will also be plugging the forthcoming event to be held in the Bird Garden the following Sunday. If you have any children / grandchildren aged between about 3 and 10 years old they will love this annual production by Stars Drama Academy. This year the production is called Alice in the Park and I am assured it will be great fun, Tickets cost £6 each and can be obtained from starsdramaacademy@yahoo.co.uk  Proceeds go to the Christie. Tickets have been sold out in previous years so I would advise booking early if you do not want to be disappointed. 

ELSEWHERE IN THE PARK

-A big thank you to Gill N for updating our posters in the lecterns.

-A big thank you to Grace who is always one of the first volunteers to arrive on a Monday morning and today took on the job of a single handed litter pick around all the very full litter bins this morning . Picture 9 shows Grace collecting all the overspill litter surrounding the bins - well done Grace. This really improved the look of the park first thing this morning. 

-It was great to see Roger once more busy improving the flower bed near the Bird Garden. You do a fabulous job here Roger. Thank you.

-Alan and Sandra have been taking advantage of some dry weather to apply preservative to the three dogs carving near the exit to the Poppy Path. This work was even carried on into this afternoon. Thank you.

BUDDY AND LUCY   

Starting on Friday, and continuing on Saturday and Sunday last week Niels, Allan and I also took advantage of the period of a few continuous days of dry weather to undertake some maintenance work on Buddy and Lucy. This is a slow process but given a few more days of dryish weather we are hoping that soon everybody will start to notice a significant improvement. Thank you for your great support Niels and Allan. 

THE NEW COMPOST BAYS ARE COMPLETE

Thanks to some great work by Geoff, the new compost bays are now built and the keys handed over to us. Picture 10 shows a picture of them taken a few days ago. Greg is currently putting together some new guidelines which recommend how we should use them and as soon as these are ready we will begin. Thank you for all your hard work on this Geoff. I think they really blend in beautifully in their new position. 

Thank you all once again for your amazing ongoing support.