Spring Clean, New Projects & Volunteer Highlights in Didsbury Park
NOTICE 1: FIRST MAJOR EVENT OF 2025 - DIDSBURY PARK SPRING CLEAN - THIS SATURDAY 22ND MARCH 2025
This year, as in other years, we will be holding a family fun volunteering event as part of the Great British Spring Clean and Great Big School Clean 2025 event which takes place this year by Keep Britain Tidy between 21st March and 6th April. This is very much a family event involving our 4 local primary schools and the Didsbury Park Volunteers. Our event will take place this coming Saturday between 10am and 1pm. We would like to encourage as many people as possible to participate.
Please see the poster in picture 1. I have ordered lots of additional litter pickers from MCC so please do try and come along if at all possible. Let's give the park a big spring clean!
NOTICE 2: NHS SPONSORED "ACTIVITY FOR HAPPINESS FUND"
I am pleased to report that we recently received a small grant from the NHS BCD Mental Health Task Team for funding a small event for our volunteers who work in the park. The grant is part of the NHS sponsored "Activity for Happiness Fund" and despite being doubly over subscribed we were successfully awarded funding to provide some "finger food" at our coffee break time on a Monday morning as a thank you gesture for all the volunteering work we do.
Gill N has been working with Jo at the cafe and it has been agreed that we will put this treat together for everyone in 2 weeks time on Monday 31st March 2025. If it rains then Jamie has agreed that if we need to, we can use the Didsbury Neighbourhood Centre. Thank you Gill, Jo and Jamie. Please do come along and enjoy it.
TODAY
We had a large volunteer team of 43 volunteers working right across the park this morning. Our regular volunteers were joined by Richard, Hannah and Preethi from Autotrader, Greg from NatWest, Holly from Pets at Home, Leo from NG Brady, and Meryl a new local volunteer. In addition we were also joined by Aristhote and his job coach Jennifer from Bridge College and by Qazim once again..
Everybody was thrilled to see the return of Sonia today. For those who did not know, Sonia set off on Christmas Day to tour the world taking in North America, South America, the Pacific islands, New Zealand and Australia, then taking a rest in South Africa before returning home today just in time for our tea / coffee break in Didsbury Park. Welcome home Sonia! Everybody was made very welcome.
TODAY: DELIVERY NUMBER 1 - SOAKAWAY GRAVEL
We had an early 8:30am delivery of a tonne bag of soak-away gravel this morning. Qazim, Allan and myself then used the pallet truck to move the bag of gravel to the Flower Walk where gradually we built up a team of additional volunteers as they arrived, consisting of Greg from NatWest, Holly, Rebecca, Christine, Lesley, John and Stephen. This was an amazing team as once in action they quickly dug out and laid an impressive soak-away to the end of the Flower Walk.
This team worked so efficiently that this project was completed by just after our tea / coffee break. Well done everyone. This was an amazing piece of work and I promise to order some more gravel so that we can complete around the corner next week.
TODAY: DELIVERY NUMBER 2 - NEW KICK FENCE POSTS AND METAL STRAPS
Mid morning we had another delivery. This time it was new kick fence timbers and accessories to enable us to replace the rotting kick fence timbers in our oldest kick fencing next to the spring bulb area and to enable us to create a new bench area along the path to Wilmslow Road.
Picture 2 shows Carl N, Adrian and Richard having just successfully replaced a rotten section of kick fencing with new timbers. Well done guys. This is really making the park look smart.
TODAY: KICK FENCE PRESERVATIVE APPLICATION
Charlie showed real dedication this week, when she returned to the job started last week, of applying preservative to the kick fencing along the path to Wilmslow Road.
Picture 3 shows (from left to right) Richard, Hannah, Leo, Preethi and Charlie posing for a picture as they near the end of painting the full length of kick fencing along the path. Having completed this section of fencing the same team then moved on after the tea / coffee break to complete the section of kick fencing behind the wild flower meadow.
They can be seen hard at work on this second section in picture 4 as Anne passes by with a wheelbarrow full of twigs which she and Kevin (background) had been collecting for the wilding area. (see next section). This preservative painting has been a fantastic piece of work. Thank you all.
TODAY: WILDING AREA
The plans for the wilding area are really beginning to take shape now as can be seen from picture 5 where Greg and Kevin can be seen developing a dry hedging section of the scheme. This work is a crucial part of our wild life and sustainability programme.
Also helping on this interesting and important project this morning were Sandra, Wendy, Lorna and Anne. Thank you all - this project is really starting to develop nicely.
TODAY: LOTS OF NEW PLANTS FOR THE PARK
Another huge thank you today must go to Jude who once again used her car to visit West Didsbury for the second week running to collect the plants so kindly donated by Dorothea Shirovay. The new plants include Shrubs: 2x Callicarpa Purple, 1x Berberis Orange Sunrise, 1x Lonicera Periclymenum ’Strawberries & Cream’ 60cm bush (non-climbing). Perennials: GRASSES -Miscanthus ‘Gracillimus’, 2x Calamagrositis, (Stipa) Brachytrica, Carex Green, Carex Festuca ‘Intense Blue’. FLOWERING PERENNIALS - 2x Trifolium Rubens, Perovskia Blue Spire, Veronica Purpleicious. This has been an amazingly generous donation of excellent plants which will add some lovely colour and variety to the park. Thank you Dorothea.
Picture 6 shows Julie Jude and Diane planting the Lonicera (honeysuckle) along the path to Wilmslow Road. Thank you all.
TODAY: 2 MORE EXCELLENT JOBS
A huge thank you to Chris, Shashvat and Wahid who worked as a very efficient team today, firstly moving soil from a mound of ex bowling green soil to a newly landscaped area of the park. Thank you guys! The team then went out to undertake some tree maintenance activities in the newly created rowan copse.
PIcture 7 shows Wahid, Shashvat and Chris all working on clearing around a rowan tree base each and then adding mulch. Thank you guys these were two great jobs!
ELSEWHERE IN THE PARK
- Picture 8 shows Carl M cleaning up and varnishing one of the benches on the wild flower meadow. Carl was also helped in this job by Preethi. Thank you both. Let's hope we can finally get this area open to the public this year!
-Brenda once more made a huge improvement around the Gillbrook Road entrance - thank you Brenda
-Aristhote and Jennifer almost filled a large bag of litter after doing a great litter pick across the park. Thank you both.
- Picture 9 shows Tristan returning to the shelter after working on de-weeding the flower bed near the Sandhurst Road entrance. This was a great job. Thank you Tristan.
-Finally last but not least a big thank you to both Denise and Geoff who not only straightened up some bent hedge cutters but sharpened them up for us too. This is much appreciated. Thank you
Thank you once again for your amazing support.