A Fantastic Spring Turnout for Volunteers in Didsbury Park

TODAY

It is a real pleasure to be able to switch off briefly from all the horrors of current world politics, and be able to enjoy the colour and beauty which spring is offering us in Didsbury Park at the moment.

Maybe it is not surprising therefore that today we welcomed our highest number of volunteers so far this year. We had 60 volunteers working throughout the park and it was amazing the amount of work we managed to complete. Today was also the first appearance, this year, of a group of guest volunteers from business.

We were delighted to welcome 12 volunteers from Bovis, who are currently working on the refurbishment of Manchester Town Hall, and who were returning to work with us for the fourth year running. We also had a lovely surprise return visit from Diane who does not live nearby any more but made the trip over from where she now volunteers in Lime Park. It was great to have you working with us again Diane. We were well supported once again by the students and staff from Brentwood School and from Bridge College.

 I am also pleased to report that our team of regular junior litter pickers were out in force again today. Winnie was accompanied as usual by Andrew but as Ben (Emiline's dad) was not available today, Emilene insisted that grandad Ian accompanied her instead! Everybody was made very welcome  

On behalf of today's volunteers I would also like to say a special thank you to David and Tracy McHugh who today very generously donated a large box containing lots of packets of chocolate biscuits which were very very well appreciated by this morning's volunteers at their coffee break. Once again, we were very appreciative of this spontaneous generous gesture by two of our regular park users. Thank you

Thank you also to Gill N who managed the large coffee and tea order and to the cafe team who together delivered it so impeccably. 

TODAY - PLANTS, PLANTS AND MORE PLANTS

In a completely spontaneous happening today, a number of our volunteers turned up loaded with additional plants for us to add to our stock in the park.

Picture 1 is a good example, and shows Louise arriving in the park loaded up with 3 phormium (cream delight) plants. Kevin had arrived earlier with grasses and plants donated by Maggies, and similarly Jude, Diane and Ilma came with donations from their own gardens. Thank you all - this is brilliant!

Picture 2 shows the team of Diane, Jude, Joyce, Lucy, Christine and Ilma planning where in the park all these new plants should be planted. Later on, the team was joined in the task by Julie and Tristan to make sure that they were all planted in the right places as soon as possible but we had so many plants we still have some over to plant next week.  

Meanwhile at the other end of the Flower Walk Picture 3 shows Gill B (behind the tree), Christine (back from the planning meeting!) and Anne G who had been working with Anne W to continue the ground elder weeding along the Flower Walk. This was an excellent morning's work everyone - thank you!

TODAY - WILD FLOWER MEADOW

Last week Sandra and Lorna successfully painted a coat of preservative on one of the picnic benches last week. This week they co-opted Wendy and Lorna onto the team and set about the preservation of the other picnic bench on the wild flower meadow.

Picture 4 shows Lorna, Sandra, Wendy and Lis all busy sanding the bench before applying a generous coat of preservative. Thank you all. This is a great job on the second bench. 

Meanwhile Allan was also working on the wild flower meadow, undertaking the Herculean task of using the leaf blower to clear the wild flower meadow of a large number of dead leaves from the lawned area. An amazing job Allan - well done and thank you.   

TODAY - ARE WE UP TO THE CHALLENGE OF THE LEAF PENS? 

It is fair to say that our leaf pens have been a bit neglected for a number of years, so today was the day we began rebuilding to enable us to establish a workable routine for mulching our leaves on a regular basis.

Picture 5 shows 3 of our volunteers from Bovis busy constructing the new enclosure. Thanks to some great digging work today by the Bovis team, step 1 has now been taken. There is still some more hard work to follow, but we have started.  Thank you team. 

TODAY - IMPROVING THE ORGANISATION OF THE STORE ROOMS IN THE VOLUNTEERS SHELTER

Spring was in the air this morning as we set about tidying and adding more storage capability to the store rooms. Following last week's construction of a new shelving unit, Taylan, Carl, Chris and Mustafa tackled a further 3 units today.

Picture 6 shows Taylan and Carl constructing a second new unit of shelves and picture 7 shows Taylan, Chris and Mustafa returning to the volunteers shelter with the fourth and final unit. Once again, this was a great start to continuously improving the way we store and look after our tools and equipment.  Thank you guys.  

TODAY - WOODCHIP PROJECTS

We had three teams involved in using woodchip in their projects today.

Project 1: The students and staff from Brentwood School worked in convoys of wheelbarrows full of woodchip as they successfully applied it as a mulch to the flower beds alongside the path to the Wilmslow Road exit. Thank you team - this was another great piece of work

Project 2: Picture 8 shows the small team of David M, and Patrick tidying up and weeding the bases of the small trees on the main field. They were also helped by Chris who would apply woodchip as a mulch. The effect of this work had an amazing effect upon the look of the whole area - very similar to the Buckingham Palace gardens!! Well done guys - excellent work.

Project 3: Three members of the Bovis team today did a superb job making a substantial woodchip pathway from two existing paths to the new bench set among the daffodils. This whole area just looks so much better now. Thank you guys.  

TODAY - NEW KICK FENCING TO PROTECT FLOWER BEDS

Picture 9 shows a picture of Richard, Greg and Murray who along with Gary made up our heavy gang today. They did some amazing work as they designed and started the installation of a new low level kick fence to border the new flower bed created within the last year. By the end of the day all the uprights had been concreted in place ready to finish off the project next week.  This was great work guys and as we have seen with the triangular bed, it works very effectively in preventing the dogs from killing off the flowers. Thank you. 

Thank you also to Lesley Mc who worked alongside the heavy gang to weed and maintain the flower beds in this area.  

TODAY - BUG HOTEL DEVELOPMENT

Picture 10 shows Kevin and Roger happily building another bug hotel in the woodland area. This is a huge improvement on the existing ones in this area. Thank you guys. 

Finally, thank you once again for such fantastic support on a very busy day.