Oooops..!
Bristol City Council has been quick to apologise after grounds staff mowed a park that volunteers had planted with 30,000 daffodils and other spring bulbs.
Friends of St George’s Park in Bristol fundraised to buy 30,000 spring bulbs to make their community beautiful. 70 volunteers, including parents and their small children, invested time and money doing the backbreaking job of digging holes and individually sinking bulbs into them.
A spokesperson from Bristol City Council stated: “We recognise the upset and concern this incident has caused the local community… Officers are investigating the events around the mowing of this area and will liaise directly with the ward councillors and local volunteers to address the situation.”
The Council has since offered to cover the £6,000 cost of the bulbs.
The Friends had raised the money for the bulbs over long months by selling 12,000 bags of duck food from the Park’s cafe. Seeing the stubs of flowerless stalks was, as one volunteer said ‘really demoralising’, to put it mildly.
Ironically, the Friends had coordinated the planting with Bristol City Council’s conservation and parks teams. Members of the team and at least two councillors helped with the planting. The Council was even planning to use the publicity from this lovely event to demonstrate how volunteers can work with councils to improve local parks.
While the hours spent fundraising and planting have come sickeningly to nothing this year, the speedy apology and willingness to cover the cost of the bulbs are at least providing signs of new growth in relations between the council and local people. It may be of little comfort now, with only a third of the bulbs potentially surviving to flower, but next year’s display should be all the more precious.
Let us hope for ‘a crowd, a host of golden daffodils … nodding their heads in sprightly dance’ in 2027.