Tis the season for sludge sucking, tree planting and marshmallows over a campfire!

Happy Christmas everyone! This shall likely be the last blog post of 2014 which has been a year of planning, fun activities, lots of volunteer work, and a few changes in the park.  I believe 2015 will have a lot more exciting things to report on as the lottery project develops and work gets under way.  To give you a taster of things to come, we have had an artist create his impression of the park in the future following the lottery funded works....

The Hub

Marnock Lake

The Whole Park

The Play Area

The Wetland

There are now a few temporary noticeboards up at some entrances to the park displaying these images and what work to expect next year.

This week has been an exciting week for Marnock Lake and its resident wildlife.  As early work in the lottery funded regeneration of our heritage features and to improve the water quality, the lake is currently being de-silted.  You may have noticed the sludge suckers lurking around! The fish that were in the lake were safely re-homed in advance of this and our rather confused resident ducks will no doubt come and go as the work goes on but will be happy when it's all back to normal and cleaner than ever.

I am very pleased to say that our Community Orchard has now landed with the planting of 15 semi-mature fruit trees (6 cherry, 3 damson, 3 crab apple and 3 black mulberry) in National Tree Week at the beginning of December, Applications are currently open for members of the local community to sponsor and plant their very own fruit tree as part of the orchard.  This first phase of community planting should occur in February half term.  If you want to get involved or sponsor a tree please visit the Friends website www.fogh.org,uk. The deadline for current applications is 5th January 2015.

The fabrication of new pieces of equipment for the Skate Park is now complete and we expect to see Gravity SkateParks on site over the next couple of weeks installing and carrying out the necessary alternations.  An on a non-lottery matter, if you have noticed large piles of stone by the Hilbert Road gate and a small container, this is for the repair work to the culvert in the woods near Redleaf Close.  This work will be happening over the next few weeks.

Our volunteer programme will break for Christmas now and be back on from Thursday 8th January. The new programme is now on the noticeboards and Facebook page - please feel free to come along anytime. Also look out for upcoming events in the new year such as family volunteer days. Posters will be on the noticeboard and details on the ghparkhlf Facebook page.

Merry Christmas everyone and Happy New Year! We leave you with some pictures from our fun and wintery Woodland Adventure Day...