FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
What the Friends now expect of Merton
Spring 2006
MERTON
Council parks representatives and the Friends Committee toured the park on 10
December and again on 4 February to agree projects for joint participation and expenditure in the year
ahead.
1. Provision of the spring and summer annual bedding plants between the Main Entrance and the Aviary. From next autumn these will be replaced by lower maintenance perennials such as topiary and hardy grasses.
2. Traditional bedding will continue in the Sunken Garden for the foreseeable future.
3. The Dutch Garden will have either annual bedding plants or herbs this spring but will permanently become a herb garden after the summer.
4. The Aviary will be repaired and repainted when weather conditions permit. Rotten wood will be replaced.
5. Merton will arrange six-monthly cleaning of the newly restored Diana and Haile Selassie statues from now onwards.
6. Merton will provide the Friends with a cost estimate for replacement of all essential fencing throughout the park. The Friends will then apply for a grant from an external funding body to cover this, with Council support.
7. Replanting beside the wall of the Keir Garden in Camp Road, restored after gale damage in 1999. This formerly had many rare trees and plants but some of the replacements were stolen. Those that did go in and should look good this summer include Loquat (Exchorda Japonica); the red spring-flowering Ribes speciosum; yellow Bottlebrush (Callistenom); the Fokia Hodgsonii conifer; the white flowered Drymis Winterii; the Podocarp shrub. There is also a magnificent Wisteria which survived the gale.
8. Closure of a path in Lady Jane’s Wood subject to badger disturbance and replacement by a new path linking the upper and lower sections of the Mediterranean Garden. A new winding path designed especially for disability access has already been created in the Mediterranean Garden and further landscaping is planned. Taking in the Retreat in the far corner of the park, for long a wasteland, this should involve long-term proposals with a clear schedule for completion year-by-year up to 2010.