It's always a bit startling to see a memorial garden to someone you knew, but I'm sure this is another thing my mum would put down to living too long in one place. This lovely memorial garden, set up in 2017, is looks a little frayed round the edges as a result of lock-down work pause, but it's still beautiful. Set up in memory of Councillors Val Smith, Barbara Gatehouse and Carole Roberts, a trio of practical and solid benches, now showing the weathered silver of old wood, surrounded by a shivering glitter of golden oats shot through with purple verbena and (I suspect invading rather than intentional, but none the worse for it) yellow thistle. Soft underfoot flexi pea-gravel paths are wheelchair friendly and well spaced. Trees are looking a little water starved this year; I've seen on the local groups, residents organising tree watering parties.
The chunky benches are the main attraction, rather than any kind of memorial, though a loose stone circle of Oxford golden sandstone dances roughly through the borders, Rollrights on a municipal scale. The tree are young and till in their deer cages; they'll emerge in a few years time, having settled in, and changed the biome from open grassland to small woodland patch.
Gardens like these are curious things. At the moment it feels like an act of will enforced on the open green, saplings ringing it like newly-launched satellites. But as the trees bed in, it will mature, the planting will change, it will become a place of dappled shade. It's already a place of rest and relaxation, a pause-spot near the leisure centre, a meeting place.
A scatter and scuff of beer cans, lottery tickets and snack-wrappers nestle in the beds, testimony to the lock-down walk-outs, breaths of fresh air and teenagers meeting up to stretch the terms of their social distancing rules. Opportunistic weeds sprout among the planting. The fancy grasses, as grass is wont to do, have somewhat taken over. It needs to be freshened and given a haircut, like we all do. But we're in lockdown, and it's doing its bit, meeting the needs of the community, the best it can.
The chunky benches are the main attraction, rather than any kind of memorial, though a loose stone circle of Oxford golden sandstone dances roughly through the borders, Rollrights on a municipal scale. The tree are young and till in their deer cages; they'll emerge in a few years time, having settled in, and changed the biome from open grassland to small woodland patch.
Gardens like these are curious things. At the moment it feels like an act of will enforced on the open green, saplings ringing it like newly-launched satellites. But as the trees bed in, it will mature, the planting will change, it will become a place of dappled shade. It's already a place of rest and relaxation, a pause-spot near the leisure centre, a meeting place.
A scatter and scuff of beer cans, lottery tickets and snack-wrappers nestle in the beds, testimony to the lock-down walk-outs, breaths of fresh air and teenagers meeting up to stretch the terms of their social distancing rules. Opportunistic weeds sprout among the planting. The fancy grasses, as grass is wont to do, have somewhat taken over. It needs to be freshened and given a haircut, like we all do. But we're in lockdown, and it's doing its bit, meeting the needs of the community, the best it can.
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