Roadside Beautifying

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22594, 27 December 1938, Page 8

Roadside Beautifying

It is regrettable that the efforts of the Canterbury Roadside Beautifying Association have not met with the strong public support that might have been expected for such a movement. Nevertheless, the association has been carrying on quietly and effectively, as the annual report presented by the chairman (Dr. T. Fletcher Telford) testifies. It is to be hoped that as the public realise what the association is trying to do, more persons will interest themselves in its work and lend practical assistance. The roads of Canterbury, set in a wide sweep of plain for the greater part, offer little that is attractive to the road traveller except in those periods when the background of snow-covered mountains is visible. Nearer at hand there is little that is beautiful to charm the eve. The association hopes by the

planting of suitable trees in appropriate areas to break the general flatness of the landscape and offer a more pleasing effect than a drab expanse of plain, through which the motorist in particular hurries with more speed than he would possibly use if the surrounding country were made more attractive in the way the association proposes. Already, as Dr. Telford indicates in his report, a very useful start has been made with the work but unless more funds are provided progress must necessarily be slow. Canterbury people have not been backward in the past in their sense of provincial pride, as the beautiful surroundings of the city of Christchurch itself testify. They have the opportunity here to work on a much larger and even more interesting canvas. Tt will be unfortunate if they do not take advantage of it, .