Volunteers in Action: Autumn Efforts and Community Spirit in Didsbury Park
TODAY
Despite the somewhat grey and overcast morning in the park today, we still had another great turnout of 50 volunteers, ready and eager to work. Our volunteers included a team of 7 volunteers from the Co-op Bank, 9 volunteers from Brentwood High School, and Sigad and his job coach Sheeba from Bridge College.
We were also delighted to see that Lis made a welcome return to the team after returning to live in Didsbury from South Wales - welcome home Lis! Everybody was made very welcome.
TODAY - HORTICULTURAL ACTIVITIES
In line with our drive to improve sustainability, we have to thank Jude today for obtaining 50 new beautiful salvias to plant in the park. Following a donation by one of our members to specifically buy new plants for the park, Jude took the initiative to select and obtain a mixture of Magical Missouri, Magical Tigris and Blue Marvel. Picture 1 shows Sonia, Sandra, Anne and Jude making the salvias the central feature of the new flower bed. Well done everyone.
A huge thanks also today to Jane, Lesley and Lis who planted up some winter jasmine plants which I had grown and matured at home and which will hopefully eventually provide a welcome backdrop to the owl carving at the Wilmslow Road entrance. Thank you all - fingers crossed! Picture 2 shows John and Tristan taking a break later in the morning and admiring the newly planted winter jasmine.
Picture 3 shows Jude (again) with Julie and Ilma continuing the seasonal work of splitting plants and tidying up the Flower Walk ready for winter. Thank you.
Meanwhile Denise and Louise were very busy doing some good maintenance work on all the rose beds and in particular on the triangular flower bed. Picture 4 shows Denise and Louise proudly displaying the new Friends of Didsbury Park poster, designed by Louise, which celebrates the 50,000 hours of work achieved by our volunteers since 2014. Well done Denise and Louise.
Heading on down to the Wilmslow Road gate it was great to see Lucy and Joyce making war on the abundance of self seeding sycamore trees which were threatening to take over the flower beds. Picture 5 shows the girls in action being photographed with Tristan who was working nearby. Thank you all.
Once again Tristan and John did an amazing job weeding and tidying up the Wilmslow Road entrance to the park. Thank you both.
TODAY - CLEANING UP THE PARK
One of our main tasks today involved cleaning up the park after last weeks storms. Our team from Brentwood High School did a mixture of litter picking and sweeping paths across the park. Sigad and his job coach Sheeba from Bridge College swept all the leaves from the path near the volunteers shelter and picture 6 shows Brenda once again making the Gillbrook Road entrance look spic and span. Thank you all - this was a great effort.
But especial thanks to Andrew and young Winnie who were off to a flying start first thing this morning and as picture 7 shows, they already had a pretty full bag of litter by the coffee break!
TODAY - EDGES
With a delivery of 2 tonnes of drainage gravel during the week we were able to devote a large team to installing this along the edges of the grassed areas today.
Picture 8 shows Lorna, Augustine, Carl and Kedir with the newly filled drainage channel in front of them. Other volunteers working with this team were Allan, Fasil, Lesley and Sandra. This was an amazing piece of work - thank you all.
TODAY - BIRD GARDEN
Today was the day the team of Gary, Chris and Greg completed the final stage of the 3 stage project to enhance the bases of the lecterns in the Bird Garden, Today it was the turn of the bird feeder.
Picture 9 shows the amazing results achieved by Gary. Chris and Greg (unfortunately Greg was not available for the picture). This is a superb transformation - thank you all!
TODAY - WOODCHIP FOR THE CHILDREN'S PLAYGROUND PATH AND THE WOODLAND TRAIL
Whilst there has been a lot of tree damage from the recent storms, there has been some benefit to us in the form of an improved supply of woodchip. So today we dedicated the whole of the Co-op Bank team to topping up both the woodchip path to the children's playground and the woodchip path along the woodland trail.
The Co-op team also undertook one of our regular safety checks along the trail and cut back any obstructing or potentially obstructing plant growth along the path. The Co-op Bank team pictured in picture 10 did an amazing job. Thank you all.
TODAY - ELSEWHERE IN THE PARK
A big thank you to Gill who not only managed a huge drinks order for our volunteers but also updated the lecterns with new posters advertising the BIG LEAF CLEAR UP on Saturday 25th October from 10am to 1pm. Please do come along.
The heavy gang of Murray and Richard did a re-design of the new bench installation today in order to introduce a more sophisticated shape of the hard standing for the new bench being installed. It involved more hard digging but the new shape is now becoming clear. Thank you Murray and Richard.
Despite being jet lagged after arriving on a flight from the USA this morning Kevin made a valiant appearance and continued his work in the woodland area. Well done Kevin!
LAST WEEK
The storms at the early part of last week seemed to keep the anti social behaviour and vandalism at bay. But just like the midges on the West Coast of Scotland, and just as irritating, as soon as the weather improved the vandalism returned. A huge thanks to Alan T for responding so quickly and removing the obscene graffiti within 24 hours of it appearing on the Poppy Path and on the Billy Baggit sign on the path to the Poppy Path,
Finally a huge thank you also to Tom G who whilst walking his dog in the park one evening last week, saw me struggling to haul a hand truck containing part of a load of concrete edging which had been incorrectly delivered to my house instead of to the park. Tom G insisted that he walk his dog home to Withington and return with his vehicle to drive the remaining concrete edges round to the park with me. It never ceases to surprise me what amazing support from the most unexpected sources we receive from people in our community.
Thank you Tom. It was much appreciated.
Thank you once again for your amazing support.