POHUTUKAWA PLANTED

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27055, 2 June 1953, Page 8

POHUTUKAWA PLANTED

NEW RESERVE NAMED AT SUMNER About 150 persons, including many children, watched the Mayor of Christchurch (Mr R. M. Macfarlane, M.P.), assisted by the Director of Parks and Reserves (Mr M. J. Barnett) and an old and respected resident of Sumner, Mr E. A. Barton, who recently celebrated his ninetieth birthday, plant a pohutukawa tree on a grassy reserve at the foot of Clifton, Sumner, yesterday morning. The Mayor officially named the reserve, which will be developed as a garden, the Sumner Coronation Reserve. Already on the plot is a stone commemorating Sumner’s fiftieth anniversary as a borough—lB9l-1941—and marking the site of a store of the Canterbury Association which was situated there more than 100 years ago. Mr G. F. Allen, president of the Sumner Residents’ Association and chairman of the Sumner Coronation Celebrations Committee, who presided at the ceremony, recalled that because the Sumner waterfront had recently taken a severe battering from the sea and anything planted along there had suffered, his committee had felt that this garden plot would be a more suitable site as a reminder of the Coronation—a tangible symbal of Sumner’s loyalty and rejoicing that could be seen for all time. He believed that the City Council would ultimately decide that the reserve should be made a garden of the garden city of Christchurch. The Mayor said that he wished to direct his remarks particularly to the children. They should not imagine that the British Empire was crumbling or falling to pieces. He believed that the new status of the Empire in which its many parts were now bound together in the Commonwealth was of advantage and benefit to the Empire and Commonwealth, and he predicted that in the future it would be more solid and united than ever. Mr Macfarlane said he wanted to also say a word about loyalty. He said that he did not speak o: loyalty in the sense of hatred or malice to any other country. They must all work for Understanding among the nations, but it was essential that they should be loyal to their country and the Commonwealth for whose preservation so many had given their lives in the past. At the opening of the ceremony the Sumner Silver Band, under the conductorship of Mr Louis Fox, played “Elizabeth of England,” and at the end it accompanied the singing of the National Anthem. Mr Allen also called for three cheers for the Queen. The Mayor was accompanied to the function by Cr. T. H. McCombs and

the Town Clerk (Mr H. S. Feast) Among local body representatives present were Messrs F. L. Brandt and R C. Neville.