After the weekend’s deluge of rain followed by some sun, it was great to see a sunny morning in the park. Allan and Sonia had put all the tools and equipment out, so they had an early start!

Partly because of the weather, we had a good turnout of 41 volunteers. These included 20 from Lendlease who spent the whole day working in the Park. These were the jobs that all the volunteers did today:

Flower Walk

The major task today was moving the compost that was delivered last week to the newly prepared bed next to the repaired wall. This took a large team with barrows and forks the first part of the morning. This was a good job well done and the bed is starting to look ready for planting over the next month. It was also a relief to many of the park dog walkers to see the dispersion of the small piles of compost that had provided a great place for their dogs to roll. Ilma and the rest of the horticultural team have made a plan for the restored section, and we look forward to seeing the new flower bed.

Another smaller team continued to remove perennial weeds and tidy the existing beds on the Flower Walk.

Wild Flower Meadow

We continued to cut back the central section of the wildflower meadow to remove the plants and scatter the seeds from this year’s growth. It is now ready for seeding with Yellow Rattle, which is a plant that controls the growth of grass. This is an important step to take as it should prevent grasses from dominating the meadow.

Heavy Gang

This team continued their work repairing the border edging next to the repaired wall. This is now looking great, and this important work is nearly complete.

Wilmslow Road

The Lendlease team did a major job in continuing the kick fencing along the Wilmslow Road path. They made remarkable progress during the day. This has really improved the appearance and secured the borders in this part of the park.

Other work

Several members of the group continued work on clearing up the Poppy Path which had become overgrown over the last few months. Others cleared paths and trimmed grass edges to improve the general appearance of the borders. We also cut back the central area of wildflower meadow.

It was sad to see that the box plants around the Buddy and Lucy sculpture had died following the box blight outbreak. As a result, we had to remove this and prepare the beds for planting an alternative next week.

Thanks, as usual, for all your support in maintaining our park.