Poor park maintenance

I have to say that I do despair sometimes about the fact that I see poor care put into local council parks. It isn’t a case of expecting the standards you see in a botanic gardens or at any other gardens open to the public with outstanding horticultural skill on display. It is a case of a complete lack of any care or standards in coring for these very valuable public parks and sports fields that really gets my goat as the saying goes (meaning I get angry about it).

In this first example, there are some westringia shrubs planted on the edged of a lawn area. Instead of a nice but simple planting, these shrubs have grass growing all the way through them. It doesn’t take a person with all the horticultural qualifications going or a million years worth of experience to say that this grass needs to be removed-eyes should be enough to tell you so. Council staff have clearly been here relatively recently to mow the lawn area, so I think it is fair to say it’s pure laziness and not having any pride or care in your work to tidy it up. This is both the staff that look after the park and their supervisors that don’t stop this laziness from continuing.

Incidentally, this public park is actually council sports fields, used for cricket in the summer and soccer in winter, along with people out running, walking dog and letting kids use their limitless energy.

The images below are of the path around the sports field area. The grass is now growing onto the pathway and seems to be growing further and further onto this path.

This is another lazy piece of no work done. As an ex council parks team leader, I know that these people work in teams. While one chap is mowing the field, another chap can be walking around the edge of the path with an edger. An edger is tool specifically manufactured to make a tidy, clean edge between grass and adjacent pathways. Why this hasn’t been done for more than a year is beyond me. I know this because I only come up here when my son is playing soccer, and it is worse than last year.

Some lovely folk will say that the council only has limited cash that is often spread very thin and that playing fields and parks are not a priority or of major value. I have to really disagree here!

Yes, councils do only have limited cash for all they need to do under their large remit. BUT, these parks do have huge value. The number of people that use all the parks in my area, not just the one I am moaning about, is huge. Sport, kids parties, teenagers hanging out, friends and family meeting up and people just wanting to be in the fresh air are using these places every single day-even when it’s raining like it is now!

I strongly believe that people need access to well maintained and functional public parks as a right. That means that the plants that are already there are looked after properly, as are any associated facilities that exist in these spaces to enable the best and most financially viable use of these parks.

In my working life, I do now have to hold myself to a higher standard as I work in a private school, where standards are a lot higher for their grounds. This does not, however, take away from the fact that there seems to be a ‘no care given’ attitude, where the least amount of work done in a given day is the gold standard. It is part of the reason why a job in horticulture is seen as a poor choice-too much poor work by underpaid staff with, often, no qualifications doing the work.

Now, after my rant on the woeful state of some things here at these playing fields in North Turramurra, there are some, though limited, nice things going on.

First up is that some wattles are getting their flower buds ready for their wonderfully yellow annual winter flower show. These flowers have a devine sweet smell like nothing else I know.

Here is the wonderful purple flower of a Tibouchina tree. I actually think the contrasting purple and green stands out more under a grim, grey sky than in bright sunlight. Either way, they are really pretty!