North Victoria Garden Scheme

City Parks has fenced off a part of the north Victoria Garden in preparation for creating mixed shrub/flower beds down the centre of the grassed area. However attractive the planting may turn out to be, this shows a lack of imagination and a lack of consideration for the true needs of pedestrians.

The garden is presently surrounded by cracked, uneven, underused paving and redundant shabby railings. This could all be swept away and the area of garden extended up to the trees with extra grass and/or beds and a landscaped  path established along the centreline of the garden thus taking the pedestrian well away from the traffic and making it a much more attractive and healthy route. This surely need be no higher in regular maintenance costs than the proposed scheme and the cost of establishing the new path would surely be no greater that that of repairing the existing  paving and maintaining the railings. The extra area of grass would have the added benefit of reducing water run-off.

I do urge City Parks to reconsider these plans before any further work is done.