A Busy Morning as We Prepare for Two Major Park Events
TODAY
It was an amazingly busy morning in the park today as we worked towards two major upcoming important events in our calendar. In two weeks time on Monday 29th June we will be visited by the Lord Mayor of the City of Manchester who will be coming to formally open the wild flower meadow. At the moment the wild flower meadow is looking stunning with thousands of beautiful oxide daisies in full bloom and today we were delighted to see the first of the poppies starting to appear. Picture 1 (taken by Kevin) shows the new poppies amidst a sea of daises.
Our second major event will follow, just over a couple of weeks later, on Thursday 16th July when the park will be judged by the RHS judges as part of this year's Britain in Bloom competition. Last year we were awarded top awards in both the "In Your Neighbourhood" and "Small Parks " categories - so this year we are working hard to try and make sure that the park is maintained at the same high standards.
So, it was great to see that we had a huge attendance of 73 volunteers, working in the warm sunshine in the park this morning. Our attendees included 13 volunteers from NatWest, who can be seen in picture 2, relaxing in the sunshine at their coffee break. We also had a visit from 6 pupils from the Barlow RC High School, who were particularly interested in horticultural activities. We were pleased to be able to guide them through some planting activities before they undertook some litter picking across the park.
Picture 3 shows the pupils with teacher Ms Lynch. It was also great to see Miranda returning to volunteer for her second week and we were very pleased to welcome a new local volunteer Xia Li, who was successfully recruited by Lorna whilst they were both watching the Didsbury CofE Sports Day event on the sports field. Our earliest volunteer to arrive this morning was Oliver from MBC Building Contractors who took advantage of the dry day to continue to rebuild the broken garden wall near the Sandhurst Road pedestrian entrance.
We also had a special welcome for Shashvat, our medical student, who returned today from his year at Leeds University. We were also joined by our regular volunteers from Brentwood College and Bridge College. It was great to see so many volunteers - so much support!! Thank you. Everybody was made very welcome.
TODAY - WILD FLOWER MEADOW ACTIVITIES
Not surprisingly, we had a large team working in the wild flower meadow today. Picture 4 shows Felix and Miranda busy weeding and pruning the surrounding hedging and picture 5 shows Patrick and Shashvat tidying up all the tree bases around the ten Himalayan Birch trees in the wild flower meadow. The bulk of the NatWest team also worked at weeding underneath the hedges and planting bedding plants around the periphery.
The volunteers working on the wild flower meadow were also joined by the pupils from the Barlow RC High School who were shown the techniques of planting bedding plants. A huge thank you to everyone who made such a huge contribution to the work on the wild flower meadow today.
TODAY - THE NEW SLOW-RELEASE IRRIGATOR INSTALLED IN THE MOSS GARDEN
With the onset of warmer dry weather in the summer, we have been keen to establish some way to slowly irrigate the moss garden and preserve the layer of moss which has been established in it. Picture 6 shows the team of David, Carl M and Tristan who I am pleased to report, implemented a new experimental system today. This new system is based upon the large green bucket in the picture acting as an underground reservoir of water. Working together, the team firstly drilled a number of holes in the bucket, before filling it with rubble and then burying it close to the moss area.
Once buried the team then inserted a large tube at the top and then filled the bucket with water via the tube. The theory is that the ground around the moss will remain damp as the water is slowly released from the reservoir in the bucket. It is a great theory - so let's see what happens!! This was a really exciting and fun thing to do and one which we will carefully monitor to see if it works. Well done Tristan, David and Carl. Fingers crossed!!!
TODAY - IT IS A DRY DAY SO TIME TO GET ON WITH SOME PRESERVATIVE PAINTING
Picture 7 shows Prof Steve, whilst still recovering from a broken foot, on light painting duties, as he is half way through doing a superb job applying a coat of preservative paint to the circular bench around the giant redwood tree.
This made an amazing transformation to this very popular seating area. Thank you Steve. Great work!
TODAY - ALL HANDS TO THE FLOWER BEDS
One of our other priority jobs today, was to focus on improving the state of some of our flower beds, particularly those which we had not been able to get to during the last few weeks.
Picture 8 shows the really happy team of Xia Li, Lesley, Sandra and Sofia working on the central part of the Flower Walk. Interestingly the team originate from China, Somerset, Southampton and Siberia respectively and they all get on famously. What a lesson for some of today's world leaders!
Picture 9 shows Ilma and Jude tidying up the flower beds at one end of the Flower Walk. This was a great improvement thank you.
Picture 10 shows John, Julie, Kevin, Anne and Lucy hard at work on the end of the rockery and the adjacent bed. Once again, the improvement was amazing.
Other volunteers not included in these pictures but working equally as impressively on weeding and tidying up the flower beds around the park were Sonia, Lis, Denise, Jane, Lesley Ann and Lorna. A huge thank you to you all.
TODAY - ELSEWHERE IN THE PARK
In Gary's absence, Steve took full advantage of the petrol lawn mower by doing a number important grass cutting jobs across the park. Firstly, Steve tackled the area around the bases of a number of trees on the main field before starting on the overgrown grass area around the flower bed opposite the rockery. Despite the challenge of the willow fencing Steve managed with both mower and sheers to transform this difficult grass border. Then Steve moved on to mow the areas around the triangular bed before completing a superb day's work by mowing the straggly grass around the chain fencing. This was an amazing piece of work for one morning. Thank you Steve.
In addition to the team from the Barlow RC High School, we also had some great litter picking from our regular teams of Andrew and Winnie (and accompanied by Brian the dog today), and Shigad and Sheeba from Bridge College. A big thank you for your super support in making sure the park looks so pristine.
A big thank you to Geoff for some early morning running repairs on the mower.
Thank you also to Tony for collecting a number of our sick bay tools which are in urgent need of repair.
Finally, a big thank you to Louise who took on a role of 'film director' today as she did some fun work videoing interviews and comments from volunteers throughout the park as part of some interesting work to create a film about why people volunteer and the amazing positive things people get out of doing it. I hope everybody enjoyed the experience!
Finally, on a day when we had 73 volunteers having fun and working hard throughout the park, I would like to say a heartfelt thanks for your amazing support