A NEW EDEN PARK.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 247, 18 October 1926, Page 9

A NEW EDEN PARK.

» MAIN AREA RETURFED. SHEET ROCK BLASTED OUT. FIELD RAISED AND LEVELLED. The principal playing fields of Auckland are nearly all of the "basin"' variety, and consequently among the first to feel the effects of wet weather, a disability which has occasioned unsatisfactory field conditions at times for important football and cricket matches. This feature of the Domain cricket ground was eliminated years ago by deep drainage, and the same system has been successfully used for Carlaw Park and Blandford Park, where the soil formation was favourable for this solution of the difficulty. At Eden Park, however, which is much more extensive than either of the lastmentioned two playing fields, the problem has been complicated by a thick underlying layer of solid rock. Not so many years ago Eden Park became a lake every rainy season, and remained flooded till the water poured off at the Edendale end, as there was no means of drainage through the subsoil. The ■ tunnelling of a deep drain through the centre of the area (as part of the city drainage scheme) ended the era of the periodic "lake." But, despite auxiliary surface draining, the turf has always developed faults for cricket and football purposes in wet weather on account of tbe sheet rock bed beneath the soil. Within the past fortnight the Eden Park Board of Control has made a determined effort to solve the problem of the ground's periodic surface wetness. Immediately the football season closed the big main playing ground in front of the grandstands was stripped of the top soil. A considerable area on the terrace side of the cricket wicket in the centre, has been dug up, and the underlying sheet of rock has been blasted out to a depth of three feet and filled in with scoria. Above this the soil has been replaced and given an outward fall. Simultaneously a pronounced and extensive hollow on the grandstand side of the ground has been graded up, and then the work of returfing the whole field with turf conveyed from the railway deviation operations at Otahuhu is now proceeding. The result has been that the whole field has been levelled up, and up to Saturday more than half of the area had had grafted upon it a new surface skin from the hardier natural turf of the Mangere Plain. It is expected that the whole work will be completed within the next ten days. In effect, the ground has been provided with an improved circulation by means of the scoria and loosened rock, and has been given an entirely new surface skin. Topdressing is being done simultaneously with the returfing, and when the last turf has been laid, and the whole surface treated to a heavy rolling, the field will have been raised from six to eight inches all over, and will bs immensely beautified from a cricket viewpoint. The work has been a costly undertaking, but with success in drainage and top-levelling (which is all that i 3 needed to make it one of the outstanding cricket fields of the Dominion), the effort will be found to have been well worth while.