Imminent Events and Autumn Updates in Didsbury Park
IMMINENT EVENTS
We are approaching a very busy time of the year when our following 7 events are occurring in rapid succession. The events are as follows:
Saturday 25th October - BIG Leaf Clean Up
Thursday 30th October to Saturday 1st November - Didsbury Beer Festival
Wednesday 5th November - RHS Awards Presentation in Bolton
Saturday 8th November - Act of Remembrance
Wednesday 19th November - Curry Night at the Sangam
Monday 8th December - Christmas Carols sung by the children of Didsbury CofE Primary School, with mulled wine, and mince pies before we break up for Christmas.
Monday 5th January - The volunteers' shelter opens once again for the start of another fun year of volunteering activities
IMMINENT EVENTS - MORE INFORMATION
This coming Saturday 25th October - BIG Leaf Clean Up
We will be open for business in the park, this Saturday morning between 10am and 1pm when we invite everyone in our community to join us to help us to clean up the leaves in the park. We do try and make this a fun event for the children and their families who have been turning up to this event every year for years. Please do come along on Saturday and join in. A poster about the event is attached above. See picture 1.
Thursday 30th October to Saturday 1st November - Didsbury Beer Festival
We are feeling very privileged this year that we have been chosen to be one of the two charities sponsored by the Didsbury Beer Festival being held at St Catherine's Community Centre on School Lane. The festival lasts for 3 days and at each session our trustees we will be manning a table so that we can explain what we do, have done and want to do in the future! Hopefully our explanations at the end of the sessions will be as lucid as the ones at the beginning! If you are interested in giving this event your support or just like good beer then please let Murray know and he will give you all the details.
Wednesday 5th November 2025.
On Wednesday 5th November we will find out our results given to us from the RHS judges who inspected the park in July earlier this year. The results will be announced at an awards event at the Bolton Wanderers football ground in Bolton. It is my turn to volunteer to attend this year, but if you would also like to come along, please just let me know. There is a free coach courtesy of MCC to take us and bring us back but there is a charge of £16 for lunch. Fingers crossed for a good result 🤞
Saturday 8th November - Act of Remembrance
Every year, since 2017, on the Saturday of Remembrance Weekend we have held a short Act of Remembrance on the Poppy Path next to the Poppy Path Bridge. It starts promptly at 11am with the playing of the Last Post and lasts about 10 minutes before we all retire to the cafe in the park for complimentary tea and coffee. It is a lovely, local little ceremony and well worth attending if you can make it.
Wednesday 19th November - Curry Night at the Sangam
This is the event which everyone wants to attend. It is a very popular enjoyable evening! As in previous years we have booked the large private room upstairs. It begins at 7pm with a first course of poppadoms, followed by the main course of your choice. Payment for your meal is taken very efficiently by the staff and the price will depend upon what you order to eat and drink. Sonia has volunteered to collect the names of those of us who wish to attend so if you would like to come along will you please let Sonia know?
Monday 8th December - Christmas Carols by the children of Didsbury CofE Primary School, with mulled wine, and mince pies before we break up for Christmas.
Monday 8th December is our last day of volunteering before we break up for Christmas. To celebrate another amazingly successful year just gone, and the Christmas festivities to come, the plan is to finish our volunteering work at 11am and then retire to mulled wine and mince pies in the marquee in the garden of the DNC, where the highlight of the morning will be the children from the Didsbury CofE primary school choir who will sing Christmas Carols for us and then eat our pies!
TODAY
We almost got away with it, weather wise today. Most of the morning the weather was dry with the odd light shower and the majority of our 43 volunteers managed to complete their work and get away before the heavens opened on the last half dozen of us who stayed to put the tools away. Despite this, we still managed to complete a huge amount of work.
We were delighted to welcome Sue, a new local volunteer, and to see Julian returning again after a few months absence. We also had a good turnout of 9 students and staff from Brentwood High School who progressed from litter picking to sweeping leaves today. Very well done students! It was also great to see Xin and his son Jeremy (who has just started half term) doing an excellent leaf clearing job among the trees on the main field. Everybody was made very welcome.
TODAY - PROGRESS ON THE INSTALLATION OF THE NEW BENCH
There were a lot of individually linked pieces of work today as grassed areas were dug out where the new bench is being located. Turf was moved to other areas of the park and placed in old flower beds. Gravel was then returned to create a base where the bench is to be located. Put simply: after some final adjustments to angle of the new bench to better face the park, Murray and Gary dug out the final turf sections. The turf was then transported by wheel barrow by Chris, Julian, Kedir and Fasil to the flower bed where Julie, Wendy, Jude and Lesley were removing any salvageable old plants.
Picture 3 shows Julie, Wendy, Jude and Lesley posing for a picture whilst emptying the flower bed.
TODAY - NEW PLANTS
One of our priority jobs today was planned to be the planting of the new winter bedding plants to add a sparkle of colour throughout the park during the winter months. We were particularly looking forward to our large order of cyclamens. The promised delivery of plants did arrive on time but was a terrible disappointment because unfortunately they were not the bedding plants we had hoped for. Instead of many strong healthy pots of large colourful cyclamen, we actually received two brown paper bags of cyclamen bulbs. These will definitely not add the colour during the winter months.
We were also expecting well developed hellebores and heathers - only to receive plugs. It would appear that something has gone horribly wrong with the MCC ordering process this year. Nevertheless our teams took what we had and worked with them. One team consisting of Sonia, Lesley, Christine and Jane planted Hellebores in the flower bed around Buddy and Lucy.
Picture 4 shows Lorna, Sandra and Lesley planting heathers in the flower bed next to the wild flower meadow. Tristan planted hellebores in the flower bed adjacent to the Bird Garden and Denise and Louise added hellebores to one of the rose beds. Thank you everyone this was a lot of work well done.
One of the best things about volunteering in the park is experiencing the generosity, support and kindness of people in our community when you least expect it . We had one of these unexpected experiences this morning when Val (in picture 5) turned up with a large healthy lavender plant in a bag to donate to us. Val is of course is famous for donating a pampas grass to us many years ago but warning us that it had never done anything in her garden and it might not survive - in practice this plant is now the star attraction at the pedestrian entrance to the park on Sandhurst Road. Thank you Val, Jude has planted this plant on the Flower Walk and if it does half as well as the pampas grass it will be a star plant!
TODAY - PATHS
One of our priorities at this time of year is always trying to make sure that all the paths in the park, especially those containing wet leaves, are kept as clean and safe as we can make them. So today Allan started to use the new leaf blower on the main paths and then trained Emanuel in the use of it. Emanuel then continued throughout the rest of the park. Picture 6 shows Emanuel on a wet but safe and clean section of one of the main paths in the park. Thank you Allan and Emanuel - fantastic work.
The students and staff from Brentwood High School also did a fantastic job sweeping the paths around the roundabout and Brenda once again made the paths at the Gillbrook Road entrance safe and clean. Thank you all
One of the jobs we started last week was adding drainage channels to the paths edges. This week we made sure that we completed this work by adding drainage gravel into all the channels. This work was mainly undertaken by Emanuel (before learning to use the leaf blower), Julian, Kedir and Fasil. Picture 7 shows Fasil, Julian and Kedir proudly showing off one of the completed channels. Louise has also joined them in this picture as she had been working on planting in the rose bed behind them all. Thank you everyone - great work.
TODAY - ELSEWHERE IN THE PARK
Roger worked with Joyce and Lucy to prune back some of the overgrown shrubs and to continue to remove self seedy sycamore trees near the Wilmslow Road entrance. Thank you all.
Kevin and Anne worked with Sue, our new volunteer, in developing dry natural hedging in the woodland area. Thank you once again for developing these features.
A huge thank you to Geoff who very kindly fixed and sharpened 3 pairs of our hedge shears this week. Great work Geoff.
Allan did some tidying up of the Bird Garden Hedge - thank you Allan
We also had a visit from MCC Estates today to inspect the moss which exists on the roof of the volunteers' shelter. The good news is that they will return next week to clean the roof such that we can then use the water collected from it in our large water butt without it contaminating the water (once we have cleaned it out thoroughly of course!)
Thank you once again everybody for your amazing support.