History, Highlights and a Huge Week of Volunteering in Didsbury Park
HISTORY OF DIDSBURY PARK
Thanks to Louise and Mike Casey we are edging forward in our quest to find out when Didsbury Park was first opened.
In picture 1 Louise has provided a copy of the Ordnance Survey Map of 1897 which clearly shows that the forerunner of Didsbury Park is already open under its original name of the Recreation Ground. In picture 2 Mike has provided a copy of the Ordnance Survey Map of 1894 which shows no presence of the Recreation Ground at all. So it looks like we have narrowed the opening of the Recreation Ground down to just a 3 year window, between 1894 and 1897. This would mean that this Wilmslow Road end of the park has been open to the community in the heart of Didsbury for the last 128 to 131 years. And it is still going strong!
Next week we have even more exciting information about when the Recreation Ground was expanded, redesigned and renamed as Didsbury Park. Watch this space!
NOVEMBER EDITION OF THE MANCHESTER POST
The November 2025 issue of the Manchester Post, our free, not-for-profit community newspaper, is now out on the streets. If you do not normally receive a paper copy you can access the following online version, please click here.
And most importantly, thanks once again to Louise, if you take a look at the the Didsbury and Burnage section on page 5 you will see an article and a photograph from our 50,000 hours of voluntary work celebration. Enjoy!
CURRY NIGHT - WEDNESDAY 19TH NOVEMBER AT 7PM - LAST CALL
Currently 31 of us have booked for the curry night at the Sangam on Wednesday evening this week starting at 7pm. If you would like to come along but have not yet given your name to Sonia will you please let us know asap. Please aim to arrive by 7pm. Our first course of poppadums will be served upon our arrival. Once we are all seated we will be asked to choose our main course from the main menu. I am really looking forward to having another great evening enjoying excellent food and relaxing among friends! See you there!
TODAY
It was a pleasure to work under a clear blue sky, in wall to wall, sunshine in the park this morning. Without expecting any planned additional volunteers from business today we were pleasantly surprised and delighted when Michelle and Chris, who work in business and live locally, turned up to help us out once more. In total we had a great turnout of 44 volunteers.
Our volunteers today included Maryam, returning after some time away, and Alexander and Mum Joanna, returning again for a second week running, We were also pleased to welcome our regular team of students from Brentwood High School. It was great to see that the students have grown in confidence over the weeks with us and were happy to undertake a brand new activity today - when they did some spring bulb planting for the first time. They successfully planted lots of daffodils in the woodland area.
We were also pleased to welcome Sigad and his job coach Sheeba from Bridge College, especially as they both enthusiastically did an excellent litter pick along the Poppy Path and then inside the park. Everybody was made very welcome.
TODAY - 25,000 ADDITIONAL SPRING BULBS ARRIVE READY FOR PLANTING
Thanks to some great support, once again from MCC, we were able to welcome Felix White from MCC to the park this morning with a delivery of 25,000 new spring bulbs. There was much excitement as we unloaded these into the shelter and then started to plant them across the park according to the plans submitted by Julie, Jude, Sonia, Greg and Louise. Thanks everyone for all the preplanning and especial thanks to everyone who helped with today's first day of planting. This included:
The students from Brentwood High School planting large daffodils in the woodland area.
Picture 3 shows Sandra with a wheelbarrow full of tete-a-tete bulbs and accompanied by Wendy and Lis as they make their way to join Christine, Gill B and Carl M and plant along the Wilmslow Road path,
Picture 4 shows Anne with Maryam, in the foreground of the photo, planting in the new flower bed while Michelle and Chris in the background are planting bulbs around Buddy and Lucy. Sonia was also working in area but out of shot.
Picture 5 shows Louise and Denise showing how many bulbs they still had left in their bucket!
Picture 6 shows Jude carrying a bag of small bulbs ready for planting
Picture 7 shows Julie and Carl M posing for a photograph in front of the area near the Wilmslow Road gate which had just been fully planted.
Right across the park today we had a huge number of volunteers working really hard in the sunshine, planting 12 different varieties of spring bulbs. This is a fantastic start to the 25,000 challenge we have ahead of us over the next few weeks. Well done everyone. A brilliant start and a huge thank you!
TODAY - LET'S MAKE SURE THE PATHS ARE SAFE
Given the wet and windy weather at the end of last week, the park's only damage seems to have been to the marquee in the garden of the Didsbury Neighbourhood Centre where a large branch fell on it and tore part of the roof. On the positive side, it now looks like the trees in the park have now shed virtually all of their leaves for this year - Hooray! As a result we took the opportunity today to once again clean away as many leaves as possible from the paths.
Picture 8 shows Allan with the leaf blower after tackling the heavy fall of leaves on the path in the park in the woodland area. This had the benefit of also providing additional ground cover in the woodland. Well done Allan.
Elsewhere Chris and Lesley made a huge improvement to the path next to the volunteers shelter and Alexander and his Mum Joanna did a splendid job tidying up the adjacent path behind the volunteer's shelter. In fact Alexander was making such great progress that he asked his Mum if he could stay 'all day' in the park clearing up leaves! It is really encouraging to see that we have some good volunteer material in Alexander for the future!
TODAY - THE INSTALLATION OF THE NEW BENCH - ALMOST THERE!!
With the return today of "heavy gang" members from illness, holiday and work commitments, and with David, Gary, Augustine and Zeno supplementing the team and making a huge contribution, it was amazing how much progress was made today towards the completion of the installation of the new bench. There is now considerable optimism that the installation work will be complete next week - Then we will take a photograph to show it off in all its splendour!! A huge thank you to Adrian, Murray, Richard, Carl N, David, Gary, Augustine and Zeno for some great progress today.
TODAY - THE MOSS GARDEN
The development of the Moss Garden continued today when Tristan, Carl M, Ilma and Lucy worked on adding more stonework infrastructure, tidying the shrubs close by and adding some attractive acers into the background. Well done everyone.
TODAY - THE WOODLAND PROJECT
Picture 9 shows this morning's initial woodland team of Kevin and Sue heading off to the woodland area where they were joined by Greg and Roger to work on woodland maintenance and bug habitats. Great work everyone. Thank you.
TODAY - ELSEWHERE IN THE PARK
A special thank you to Tony once again for returning this morning with another pair of sharpened sheers. Much appreciated Tony!
TODAY - NOTICE BOARD UPDATE
Finally just a quick note to say that picture 10 shows that the noticeboard in the volunteer's shelter which has now been updated today with this year's latest top awards from the Royal Horticultural Society. Well done everyone once again! The more observant may also notice a strange green visitor to the notice board in this photo. It must be that time of year coming up?
Thank you once more for your amazing support!
Hopefully we will see you at the Sangam!