News and Updates
27 February 2010 - Join us in ...A Walk Back in Time
Dont miss this one day event, designed to be part of the centenary celebrations for the park ... From 11-3pm on Saturday 27th, come to the Toast Rack building opposite the park on Wilmslow Rd - and walk a maze that takes you from 2010 back to 1910 ... in Platt Fields. Full of photos, artefacts, stories and objects, they will hope to retrace life in the park over the last centuryPrepared by students from MMU Event management course at Hollins College. Cost £1.00
19 February 2010 - a grant for our recycling stations
We are delighted to hear that we have been awarded a grant from Enterprise Manchester to pay for the installation of 6 "recycling stations" in the park ... to include recycling bays for portable barbecues, large bins for glass/cans/plastic bottles and normal rubbish bins for what is left. The recycling for barbecues is a first for Manchester - and perhaps the UK. We are constructing them ourselves (as part of our volunteer project over the next 3 weeks) as we have been unable to find anything to buy on the internet.So this summer, we expect all of you to recycle recycle recycle PLEASE!!
17 February 2010 - wonderful launch event
The weather smiled on us on Weds 17th Feb, as we unveiled a fabulous new clock on the boathouse and launched our centenary year. With the help of speeches from Cllr Mike Amesbury (Chair of Leisure Services and our own councillor), Sir gerald Kaufman (our MP and president) and Chas Farghaly (MCC Director of Parks) and the attendance of around 100 pelple, we launched in style - the velvet curtain over the clock came down perfectly, tug by tug on the golden rope holding it up; the sun came out; and we shared biscuits with clock faces painted on them. Following that members of the Friends and VIPs were treated to a delightful buffet lunch, courtesy of Manchester Leisure Services - and finished with blowing out candles on a Platt Fields 100th birthday cake! Many thanks to all who came, and to the wardens who helped us put up the plaque on that morning (it only arrived the night before!), to Hannah Wiles who designed the curtain and gold framing for the clock, to Victor for all his work getting the clock project organised and to Sainsbury"^s for their generous sponsorship of the clock......onward into the centenary!26 January 2010 - volunteering project up and running!
Our volunteering project (especially for 16 - 25 year olds) is up and running in the park. Every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday - plus other days by arrangement for groups - come to the lakeside centre. We are doing a heap of projects - painting, mosaic, gardening, construction, building a "growing boat", making floating islands for the lake , making a bridge over a ditch and dipping platforms for kids, bricklaying a barbecue ... Text Anna to check she is there 078970 68489605 January 2010 - Have you built a snowman yet? Check out the snowman gallery page!
Click here for the gallery...05 December 2009 - 180 trees planted for Guinness Book of Records!
Amazing feat - over 70 volunteers over 1 hour managed to plant 180 trees and hedgerow plants in 2 different areas of the park. The Nico Ditch area will now have a hedgerow linked with mature trees, as a haven for wildlife (especially birds, insects and small mammals) and we have started a new small wood along the fenceline by City in the Community Sporting complex. Mulled wine and mince pies served to all jubilant planter volunteers! THANK YOU!19 November 2009 - No OAM in December
Dear friends, just to let you now there will be no OAM volunteer day in December because it is so near the Christmas holidays. The next one will be Sunday Jan 17 at 1pm - wishing everyone a very happy Christmas and Hanukah.19 November 2009 - wonderful news!
We have just been awarded nearly £10,000 from a national organisation "v-inspired" to do a host of projects leading to the centenary celebrations in may 2010 with young volunteers aged 16 - 25. We are busy planning everything, so if you would like to get involved in hopefully very exciting permanent improvements to Platt Fields, please contact us today!29 October 2009 - Gardeners Question Time Fallowfield-style!
Good session with many questions from visitors, and it ended in a group discussion! We covered topics as varied as• growing grapes and figs in Manchester,
• what to do about clubroot on your cabbages,
• potato/tomato blight falls with the rain,
• how to take cuttings of geraniums and other plants,
• saving and using your own seed from ripe crops - especially beans and tomatoes
• will pollution finally make it impossible to grow food in soil?
Ron Carter (Secretary of Manchester Allotment Societies) gave excellent explanations and encouraged debate between us all. At the end he was asked what would his question be to GQT? It was "why did my parsnips completely fail this year?" Weather? poor seed? sown at wrong time? who knows .... next year it may work, thats the joy of gardening!
25 October 2009 - "Love your Loo" Project begins!
We have got funding for the first part of this project to transform the public toilets and foyer at thev Lakeside Centre. We are starting with the Ladies Toilet ...We had the first design session on Saturday, the next one will be
Weds 28 October 4 - 6.30pm (before Gardeners Question Time..!)
Painting/mosaic/collage and all creative stuff starts the following week.
Mon 2 Nov: 1-3pm; T ues 3 Nov: 10 - 12noon; Weds 4 Nov: 10 - 12noon; Fri 6 Nov: 10 - 12noon;
all budding artists, come and help! phone Anna for details: 07870 684896
25 October 2009 - News about Platt Hall Gallery of Costume
Yesterday we had a fascinating Open Meeting (attended by over 35 people) at which Dr Miles Lambert, Director of the Gallery of Costume at Platt Hall, came and told us about how the refurbishment is going there. he described the beautiful spaces that will be open to the public from next March - as the first event in our centenary celebrations. There will be a temporary exhibition space with changing exhibitions (the first will be our "Platt Fields - the first 100 years" collection; a meeting/lecture space; a schools gathering area and workshop; a space for wet/messy work; and a fabulous selection of costume from each decade over the last 100 years. Watch this space. many thanks to Miles.16 August 2009 - water storage in the boathouse!
One of our Friends has designed and offered to build us a raised platform for water storage tanks, in the eaves of the boathouse. This is wonderful news as it means that schools can water their planters on the goosebank in hot dry weather without having to lean perilously over into the lake. It means that rainwater will be collected from the boathouse gutters,rather than going down the drain. We hope to have this made in the autumn11 August 2009 - Recycling in the park is a possibility!
We have been given the go-ahead to create 6 recycling stations around the park, so we can be a bit more sustainable about the litter we all generate. Each one will contain a recycling bin (called a "^co-mingled"^ bin) that will take plastic bottles, glass and cans; a square brick barbecue-recycling bay, for disposable barbecues; and landfill bins (for other rubbish that cannot be recycled. We are now fundraising for materials to make these and hope to have them all in place before the end of the year.31 July 2009 - Critical Mass comes to Platt Fields
Over 200 cyclists of all ages (including a tiny girl in a bike chariot) came to Platt Fields as part of the monthly mass cycle ride in the city centre. They all rode round the lake twice before stopping in front of our wonderful bike mural on the old toilet at Grangethorpe Rd. Lots of people took photos in front of it.30 July 2009 - We won the green Flag again!
Many congratulations to Manchester Leisure Staff, Glendale and all our members and helpers ... we have won the Green Flag again - and "our strong Friends group and their many different activities" was particularly mentioned. THANKS TO ALL OF YOU!(for those who dont know the Green Fag is a national recognition of a well-used and well-managed park)
15 July 2009 - Biodiversity Study available for download...
In 2008 the Friends of Platt Fields commissioned a Biodiversity Study of the park. It took some time for the bird and bat surveys to be completed, but now the survey is complete and you can download it from the Plants and Animals page.01 July 2009 - Friends of Platt Fields on Facebook
We now have a Facebook group. Check it out and join up here.30 June 2009 - Blue Green Algae in the Lake
Unfortunately the lake is suffering from blue green algae again, and has therefore been closed for all activities (including fishing, boating and model boating). It can be harmful to dogs so please do not let your dogs drink or swim in the lake. If your dog has gone into the lake vets advise washing them as soon as possible.Also, it has been decided by Park Management that there is to be no duck feeding at the moment.
The ducks will not go hungry as there is plenty of natural food in the lake and surrounding area. The wardens are ensuring the wildfowl are OK.
Thank you for your co-operation.
01 April 2009 - The greenhouse is finished!
We have finished glazing our new greenhouse, after several weeks ... and are ready to start using it, to grow plants for the park. Our gardening group will meet for the first time this Sunday April 5th ... to get started. Meet at the Lakeside at 12.00 noon if you are interested in coming along.16 March 2009 - A team of 1st year students from University of Manchester have rebuilt the Bug Hotel in the eco garden...
...with an assortment of different habitats. Watch this space to see what creepy crawlies move in where ... There are so many different things: gravel, straw, compost, rotting wood, woodchip, dried leaves ..... Go and look yourself.15 March 2009 - We had our first outdoor event of the year to LEAP INTO SPRING!
We joined up with the Indian Association to put on Holi (the Hindu Spring Festival of Colour) The weather warmed up specially and hundreds of people came down to dance and "play with colour" ... We also made sweet chocolate nests, adults and kids sowed vegetable seeds to take home and we painted Pisanki - Eastern European-style eggs. It was a fantastic afternoon, with many very happy people. Roll on the next event - the bikefest in 2 weeks time.10 March 2009 - The boathouse refurbishment is complete (well, the outside at least)
The hoardings are now down (we have put the paintings we + volunteers have done over the winter on the end walls of the building, so you can still admire them ). The new roof is splendid and its all beautifully painted. Now we just need the partitioning inside and we can restore the workshop space and the boatyard.15 February 2009 - (and 28/02/09) We have been making large barley-straw sausages to lay round the edge of the lake...
...to help keep the bluegreen algae at a far distance ... No more poison on our lake. We are trying hard to encourage our visitors NOT to feed the Canada (big brown) geese bread - they SHOULD EAT GRASS. Please do try and keep the bread only for the ducks and white geese (and inevitably pigeons).10 January 2009 - Our new biodiversity plan is finished
It is a wonderful document to guide us in how to make the park more wild-life friendly, how to look after the plants and trees, the lake, the fish and the wild birds, and how to add certain new features to encourage more species to find Platt Fields a good place to live!30 October 2008 - Fallowfield Decides on lots of Good Projects that use the park!
Excellent news, at Fallowfield U Decide meeting on Thursday 30th, several projects were granted some funding, which take place in the park. Many congratulations, we look forward to seeing the results of these improvements! They are:* Storage facilities for a cycling project that uses the park.
* Platt Fields Angling Club - to make floating islands on the lake, to oxygenate the water.
* BMX Club for more bikes & safety equipment.
* Friends of Platt Fields - money to buy new plants to re-create the original Shakespearean garden back to its glory.