A couple of months ago NAH and I spent a pleasant Sunday afternoon in Gloucester. We like the colourful canal barges plus the industrial heritage and old buildings found along the wharves. I've already featured the planted walkways by the moored barges as part of my occasional Unusual Front Gardens strand.
We strolled into the nearby indoor shopping centre. How nice, I thought, they're using real trees for their public planting inside. That's not a flowering variety I've seen before.
So I went a little closer to have a good look...and what did I find?
Plastic flowers had been attached to the main branches of the trees. And the 'trees' themselves were really just lumps of wood placed in the planters.
Here you can see how it's been done. Trunks and larger branches have been placed in the planters with smaller branches of plastic flowers bolted onto them :(
It's a shame because only a few hundred yards away there's a commemorative plaque to celebrate the floral canal walkways winning a Gloucester in Bloom's Street Regeneration competition in 2007.
Bristol's Cabot Circus is a similar shopping centre where they've managed to keep their trees completely real. So why didn't they do the same in Gloucester?
You can find more examples of our public planting - good and bad - under the Out on the Streets (aka OOTS) label.
Seeing how the place faked those trees would put a damper on my enjoyment of any of it!
ReplyDeleteAll that effort to produce some ghastly artificial plant. Why do they bother.
ReplyDeleteExtraordinary - but I quite like the look of it, despite the fakery (Perhaps different if I was there). I wonder what the designers' reasoning was?
ReplyDeleteHow absolutely bizarre??!! Just shows though how much people love greenery/flowers and will do anything to have them - even if they are plastic. Very strange indeed!
ReplyDeleteReally enjoying your blog! Found you this morning and have been nicely distracted from work :)
Anna B
That is the worst piece of street 'dressing' I've seen in a long while - oh dear.....
ReplyDeleteI would rather nothing than that. I've even seen some home owners putting plastic flowers in the yard. Full blooms in January in Canada, I think not.
ReplyDeletePetoskystone - in some ways I wish I'd not gone closer. I was enjoying them up until then.
ReplyDeleteEG - I was in Bristol yesterday, enjoying the real trees in Cabot Circus
Lu - presumably year round interest
digtheoutside - welcome and thank you :)
beangenie - Norwich was worse when I was there a couple of years ago :(
sensiblegardening - hello! We have people who do that in the UK too - the ultimate in 'low maintenance gardening' I suppose.
ReplyDelete