Volunteering in Didsbury Park Manchester | Help Protect Our Park

CAUTION - PLEASE BEWARE OF THE INCREASING LEVELS OF VANDALISM AND LAWLESSNESS IN OUR PARK

During the last few weeks, as the nights have become lighter and the weather warmer, we have been experiencing an increasing number of incidents of vandalism and anti-social behaviour in our park. Sadly we have recently experienced issues like:

a teenager who sat in the baby swing in the infants play park and got so stuck in the swing that it had to be cut down and she had to be carried (still in the seat) from the park. The seat then had to be cut up in order to get her out. Thanks to some great work from Kevin Shackell and his team from MCC a new seat was quickly re-installed and the children's playground brought back up to full capacity once again.
Two slats from the circular park bench have been wantonly broken, leaving a large hole in the seat. We have now taken templates of the curved slats and will have new ones made.
We were delighted, when after five years of work, we were able to open the wild flower meadow to the public at the beginning of February this year. We were hopeful that the wild flower area would be respected by everyone who visited it. The majority of visitors have been great but over the weekend it was being used as a football pitch by a group of teenage boys. We have now put up signs saying "strictly no ball games in this area". If you see any incidents in future can you please report it on the telephone numbers below.
A few weeks ago we started a new project with our wildlife camera to observe some of the wild life activities in the woodland area. It has now been stolen. If anybody has any clues as to what has happened to our camera will you please let us know?
Finally, we now have reports of people fly-tipping at the School Lane end of the Poppy Path.

We will always work as quickly as we can to remedy any damage caused by vandalism and antisocial behaviour in the park. However it would be very useful to nip some of these destructive activities in the bud before the damage is done and whilst the culprits can be identified.

MCC provides a security service for just this purpose:

For any incidents occurring between 11am and 7pm please call the parks security team on 0788 473 5027
For any other times, MCC provides a 24hour support service on 0161 234 3685

Whilst I am always happy to be informed, it is far more important to call the MCC support line as they can often respond very quickly with a mobile unit of security officers.

Can everyone please put these numbers in their phones - hopefully never to be used, but always there in an emergency. Thank you.

TODAY

What a fantastic day we all had in the beautiful sunny weather in the park this morning. We had a great turnout of 49 volunteers. Our volunteers today included a welcome return for Adrian and Grace our regular local volunteers.

Our volunteers from business included Martin and his 7 colleagues from Kaplan, Lottie from Iris and Perry, Melanie and Matt from Costello Medical. We also welcomed Sheeba and Sigad from Bridge College. With such a large number of volunteers we undertook an amazing amount of work. Everybody was made very welcome

TODAY - THE 3 GRASS CUTTERS

We had 3 grassed areas of the park being given a good mowing today. Picture 1 shows Steve Danson mowing the lawned area of the wild flower meadow.

Earlier in the morning Gary had given the cricket square another fine cut and Steve Dalton made a huge improvement to the area around Buddy and Lucy near the Sandhurst Road main entrance.

TODAY - SUPPORT FOR THE CAFE UPGRADE

As part of the refurbishment activities in the cafe we have been helping in a number of areas. Firstly we were asked to remove our Didsbury in Bloom picture boards from the cafe wall so that DGN could installl some new notice boards.

Picture 2 shows the free standing picture boards having been unscrewed from the cafe wall by Murray, Adrian and Richard. Standing from left to right in the picture are Richard, Kevin, Louise, Murray and Adrian. Denise can also be seen in the picture crouching down next to Murray's dog. After the picture had been taken, and following some discussion with the DGN office, the boards were moved and installed in a new location along the DGN fence.

Thank you guys. This will be very helpful for the DGN cafe refurbishment project.

In addition to removing the picture boards our team of Taylan, Patrick and Chris did a great job rescuing any bulbs and plants remaining in the raised beds in front of the cafe before the raised beds are demolished. Well done guys.

TODAY - WORK ON THE CIRCULAR WOODEN BENCH

Picture 3 shows Lorna (standing) and Olly from Kaplan doing some work on the bench around the giant redwood tree.

Lorna is lifting the canopy of the tree so that people seated at the bench can relax without their heads being in the lower branches and Olly is doing a very specialist job of creating templates for the slats on the seat which have been vandalised. This is great work from both of you - Thank you

TODAY - LITTER PICKING AND SWEEPING PATHS

Picture 4 shows one of our litter picking teams having a break in the sunshine following a couple of hours litter picking across the park. The litter picking team theme today was 'princesses' - well at least for Emilene and Winnie. Andrew and Julia preferred a more casual dress code. The princesses always bring an element of fun to their litter picking on a Monday morning. I wonder what next week's theme will be! Thank you all.

Thank you also to Sheeba and Sigad form Bridge College who also did a great job, firstly litter picking, and then sweeping up the overflowing woodchip paths near the cafe.

On the other side of the cafe near the Gillbrook Road entrance Brenda also did a super job, once again, in her constant battle with the pine needles from the fir tree. Picture 5 shows Brenda with her brush and shovel at the Gillbrook Road entrance. Thank you Brenda.

TODAY - PAINTING KICK FENCING AND BENCHES WITH PRESERVATIVE

Picture 6 shows the truly amazing team of Lottie, Perry, Matt and Melanie who can be seen painting their 3rd section of kick fencing in the morning. Initially they painted the kick fencing around the new flower bed near Buddy and Lucy before moving on to the kick fencing around the triangular bed next to the roundabout and finally painting the kick fencing near the rockery. This was a super job everyone. Thank you.

Following on from applying a first coat of preservative last week, Picture 7 shows a lovely photo of Joyce applying a second and final coat to the 'Barclay's Family' bench. This bench looked really smart and cared for when you had finished Joyce - thank you.

TODAY - FLOWER BED MAINTENANCE AND ENHANCEMENT

Picture 8 shows Louise with two large plant pots containing beautiful mature pieris plants which she had donated to the park from her own garden. After some debate these were eventually carefully planted in the flower bed in the picture. Thank you Louise. Well done and thank you to both yourself and Denise once again for keeping the rose beds looking so good.

The early bird team this morning of Sonia, Lesley, Joyce and Gill B set about first thing to tidy up the flower beds near Buddy and Lucy. Once again they looked stunning afterwards. It was also decided this morning to remove the willow fencing around Buddy and Lucy as it was becoming unsightly. Well done everyone, this area is a credit to you. Thank you

Picture 9 shows 3 members of the volunteers from Kaplan with Julie and Gill B as they pause for a photograph whilst working on weeding some key areas along the path. Once the team had done a thorough weed in this area it was then covered with a woodchip mulch. Additional helpers in this area were Christine, David McCabe and Lesley. Great work everyone. Thank you.

Further up the path Tristan watered and tended to the moss garden. Thank you Tristan.

And around the corner on the Flower Walk, Ilma and Jude did some careful maintenance of the emerging new flowers. Thank you.

TODAY - DRAINAGE WORK

It was hot work and it was heavy work but nevertheless David Danson and 3 of the volunteers from Kaplan did an amazing job to extend the drainage soak-away channel alongside the main path from Sandhurst Road to Gillbrook Road.

Picture 10 shows the team lining the channel with sand before filling it with drainage pebbles. This was a huge piece of work and it will be very much appreciated when this path does not flood the next time it rains. Thank you all.

TODAY - ELSEWHERE IN THE PARK

Roger and Kevin worked together today to patch up some dog holes in the fence around the Bird Garden and then continued to develop some habitat in the woodland area. Thank you guys.
Gill N and Grace filled up the dog bag dispensers and updated all the cafe posters in the lecterns and notice boards to reflect their new later opening hours. Well done both of you. Thank you.

NEXT MONDAY - ST GEORGE'S DAY TREAT

Thanks to a small grant from MCC, next Monday the cafe are going to bake us a large St George's day cake and all hot drinks will be free. Please do come along, even if you can only make it for the cake and coffee! You deserve it!

Thank you once again for your amazing support.