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Where are the shrubs?
• I WRITE with regard to the mismanagement of the New River path, which leads towards the three major roads in south Islington.
I am beginning to feel that the council’s Greenspace group is badly named as, before a recent consultation took place, it had already taken away most of the small trees and shrubs which used to make that route like walking through woodland to the bus stop, softening the blow of living in a very urbanised borough.
Now it is definitely more “space” than “green”. I believe that claims were made about the way cover was used by young and old, an insult to the community. In the nearly 40 years a friend has lived overlooking these gardens she has never seen any such thing.
Now there are virtually no small shrubs or trees on the Duncan Terrace side, which may have made the living-rooms there lighter but has removed a community resource.
One excuse was that “light” needed to be introduced. But what happens in the case of woods and forests where all types of growth survive? Another was that the shrubs were “diseased”. But I remember that every year the lilacs and orange blossom used to bloom profusely, hardly the behaviour of diseased shrubs.
All that are left are rather indifferent hollies and rhododendrons and no one will mind if they are removed.
The replacement of the rather Victorian flowerbeds, which at least were well kept, and the bedding plants regularly and colourfully replaced, ceased about a year ago.
Instead, we have “wild” seeds sown, literally weeds which will never disappear as they will re-seed forever whereas for many years there has been a desperate need to replace the dangerous paths.
I despair at the younger generation who work for local authorities in so-called environmental work and who seem obsessed with neatness and tidiness (like Islington Green) which they can easily manage. Imagination goes out of the window.
Surely, from an environmental point of view it is essential to keep as much growth as possible near roads in order that leaves may absorb carbon dioxide, or doesn’t Greenspace have any biological knowledge either?
AVIS SALTSMAN BALDRY
Gerrard Road, N1
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