OPENING UP RESERVES

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 17, 21 January 1927, Page 11

OPENING UP RESERVES

FENCES DISAPPEARING

The Mayor, Mr. C. B. Norwood, is full of praise of what, he styles as very good taste and nice judgment displayed by those in charge of the Auckland reserves and domains in opening new vistas for people who nierely pass by and have not time to rest awhile in the reserves or even to walk through them. In all cases where reserves in Auckland are set aside for purely decorative purposes, he remarked, fences have been abolished and have been replaced by low kerbing or by rockery edgings. Not only did this style of treatment allow passer3-by to enjoy the reserves, but it gave an appearance of a considerably widened roadway. In saying^ that, added Mr. Norwood, he was not in any way suggesting that Wellington's better reserves and gardens, the Botanical Gardens in particular, were not admirably laid out and cared for, but his point was that the open treatment allowed many more people to enjoy them, and undoubtedly led to a brightening of the appearance of the city. In I uother matter the reserves people in Auckland were working along what seemed to him to be very good lines- where excavations had been made rockery faces were given the banks, by letting boulders into the clay or rock and by planting in the interstices.

"This brightening of a city," concluded Mr. Norwood, "must be a considerable factor in building up a feeling of civic pride, in which the people of Auckland,are certainly not lacking."