On a lovely sunny July day in 2011, some 20 volunteers of all ages turned out in MarineGardens on the Waterloo seafront, to shift 18 tons of gravel that had been plonked on newly discovered rockery.
The rockery had, over many years, disappeared under a grassy bank. Shifting all that gravel was no easy job so the arrival of the contractor’s giant tractor was a blessing from heaven! But this little man couldn’t understand how 18 tons of gravel could ever have got there in the first place! Many people knew of the rockery from pictures taken when the Gardens first opened in 1932, so when the Friends Group where fortunate enough to get a £4000 grant to develop the whole area, there was no difficulty recruiting locals to undertake the initial clearance.
Council officials were delighted when the rockery reappeared but without talking to the Friends group, they decided to cover all the bare soil with gravel. They were desperate to save on the cost of any new planting and any maintenance that would be necessary to prevent the rockery disappearing again.
But the Council didn’t realise the reaction of the Friends! They were appalled by the gravel and also by the assumption that they would never be able to maintain and redevelop the whole area. They pushed hard to have the gravel removed and offered to do it themselves but only if the Council agreed to shift the gravel off the site, hence the arrival of this giant tractor! A year on the rockery is magnificent, and has now been handed over the Friends Group to look after for the next 70 years! toxtethcommunityreporters | December 3, 2012