Druitts Gardens:it's happening !

I spent a couple of hours yesterday with Country side Officers and our two excellent councillors for Town Centre wandering through Druitts Gardens and making decisions on how we open the park up for the benefit of residents and visitors with the objective of creating a space for rest and recreation. This glorious area, so close to the town centre will provide a wonderful place for people to relax,groups to hold events and be a haven for wild life once some tidying up of the overgrown areas is completed and a modicum of reshaping is undertaken. The upgrading of the footpath/ cycle path network plus the new route to school Creedy path will enhance the facility especially when overhanging trees are removed and out of control shrubbery is removed. Councillors have consulted with residents about tree felling and with their support work can start almost immediately. In fact today councillors and officers will be marking redundant trees so that we can get on with the job. Remarkably 80 odd trees have already been removed yet the area still suffers from too dense a canopy and more will have to go to expose areas to light to enable grassy areas to prosper. Now what we have to do is get some sense applied to the Druitt Hall saga and open that whole area to join in some way the entrance to the gardens up to the high street. What a disaster it would be if an enormous edifice is constructed to block the whole park off just when we have made the place so accessible. The thought that once we complete the park we lose it to a construction site of such proportion is a real anathema to me, what was considered as a good idea in the heady millenium now looks moribund in the hard economic reality of 2011. As the library is developed to be more community orientated, a new facility of this proportion is likely to be unsustainable.