MANAWATU DAILY TIMES. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 16, 1920. WHY NOT A MEMORIAL PARK?

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIII, Issue 1560, 16 June 1920, Page 4

MANAWATU DAILY TIMES. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 16, 1920. WHY NOT A MEMORIAL PARK?

It is to be hoped that while the question of providing - a memorial for those who died in the great war is being - discussed, some consideration will be given to the possibilities of tree-planting in this connection. Wo can think of no more appropriate or more permanent monument to the illustrious dead than a group or park of emblematic trees. While at New Plymouth recently we saw an English chestnut grown from a so* <5 planted by a Taranaki pioneer 7 5 years ago, spreading and flourishing in the domains of a local resident. A more magnificent specimen of the handiwork of Nature it would be impossible to conceive. The drawback with ordinary monuments is that they deteriorate in ratio to their age, and tend with the general growth of things to become dwarfed and strangely out of keeping with more modern surroundings. With the trees of the Homeland this is never the case. In growth they are beautiful, in maturity magnificent, and in old age display a rare and subtle nobility and charm. Eet us imagine one of Palmerston’s ample reserves converted into a park under the direction of our skilled curator, ,Mr Black, and made the repository for a special growth of the great flora of Britain so dear to every colonial heart — of oaks and walnuts, planes and chestnuts and tlie “immemorial elms’* so dear to the antiquaries of all countries. Or we might dedicate one of our finest thoroughfares—especially now that that utilitarian buebear, the iron horse, is about to depart from our midst—to a boulevard of choicest trees to this or a.

similar purpose. Thcge is not one section of the peorde who would not he intrigued bv the idea of this silent, evergreen, restful memorial of the “living dead.” and the idea would be the more effective if to , each emblem of perpetual life Hie name of a hero were attached by a. letter plate of bronze. The R.S.A.. the parents and relatives o r the soldhe-s, the schools and all the - local institutions would, we are sure, road it v respond to the idea of a memorial nnik of the charaeteri here oidMned. more particularly if some scheme could be envisaged which would make an individual as well as ■> collective appeal to our patriotic uomdaco.