Embedded Files
August has been a fairly productive month and the Friends of Surrey Square Park are surveying the ground to spot and decide upon future areas of improvement.
Of course if more easily said than done. It is difficult enough to find a time that suit everybody and even more controversial to decide upon future course of events but at the end we all love our little park and so we find the time and the energy to debate and agree upon what there is to be done!!
We all start from the one of latest addition to the park, the windflower meadow and the wooden play-area. The meadow has turned out to be a success with lots of residents approving and liking it. After some initial problems the area, also thanks to Julian care, watering and maintenance, has boomed (sic!).
Seriously though the patch could have been easily trashed but it received instead little threat.
Same stories for the wooden play area. the two trunks were nearly set alight soon after they were installed and some in FoSSP already bemoaned the decision to go for them but in time they are loved by the local kids and their parent and are now a common feature of amusement.
it was decided to leave the meadow for the time being and to cut the grass later on in the year.Some tools would be needed though.
Another surprise was that the meadow extension along the east side of the park, along the railing forming a sort of edge, with wild shrubs and plants has survived much better than anticipated. If the vegetation will take in the next few years there is a potential of a very decent addition to the bio-viability of the park.
The Memorial Garden was the main focus of attention though few plants are not as healthy as one would wish and some work is scheduled for the next year.
At least the bird boxes we put there last spring were still in place.
The sycamore just outside the west corner of the Memorial Garden is still a worry. It was nearly fatally damaged by a fire, some Molotov cocktail if I remember properly, than it had a serious root infection and some three years past the tree-surgeon put it in the list to be cut down, to our chagrin. there is so few mature trees in this little patch of open land that just one less is sorely missed.However the tree-surgeon moved on like the rest of the Park Department and the matter was forgotten a good thing too because the tree recovered and is now look it will live on for another century or two.
Still you never know...
.
The Wild Life Area (AKA Surrey Square Nature Garden) is the most needed part of the park though.
Quite a lot of improvement work could be done on it but at the moment there is still a struggle to preserve it.
It is a very rich part of the park. It has more plants and animals than all the rest of the surrounding urban space but it is a struggle to protect it. Council officials are not interested, local often are unacquainted with it importance and potential and other public and social bodies like the local school, the adjacent Cadets Academy or churches do not consider it a resource. Some signage would be nice at least.
It'll all be a long struggle to preserve and enhance in sensible way the site. Yet again I always think it is a miracle it is still with us.
Google Sites
Report abuse