Parks are best in UK

The city’s greenspaces have been recognised once more

Edinburgh’s parks have been officially voted top of the tree in the UK.

The 135 city and neighbourhood parks recently won three prestigious Britain in Bloom Awards: the Silver Gilt medal in the ‘Large City’ category and two discretionary awards in recognition of the excellent landscapes of the Royal Botanic Garden and Edinburgh University’s Pollock Halls of Residence.

Earlier, the Parks Team had beaten off opposition from all over the UK to take the ‘Best Service Team Parks, Grounds and Horticultural Service’ at the Association for Public Sector or APSE awards.

Parks and greenspace manager, David Jamieson, praised the dedication of the 220-strong team who maintain the city’s parks and greenspaces: “These awards are the result of an enthusiastic and professionally-focused workforce which takes a great pride in what it does, as well as fantastic support from communities taking on the challenge of improving their local greenspace.”

The awards also reflect the new approach to managing the parks and green spaces. This involves everyone with a role in maintaining the parks assessing their quality and identifying how they can make a difference in a “can-do” manner.

The Council’s success also stems from asking communities what they want from their local park and responding pro-actively to it. Indeed, there are now 36 Friends of Parks groups operating across the city.

Edinburgh’s parks have also been recognised with 20 of Scotland’s 36 Green Flag Awards, the benchmark for excellence.

For community parks officer Mike Shields, the secret of this success is simple – pride in the job.

Mike, who joined the Council as an apprentice in 1977, said: “Even after 34 years I still get enormous satisfaction from my job. Many of my colleagues have served for about the same length of time and there is a friendly rivalry between us to make sure we have the best park.

“Instead of just maintaining our parks, we focus on improvements like new flower beds, signage and making the parks feel more safe and welcoming.

“Most importantly, we involve the community in this, whether it is consulting them on what they want from their park or working with them on community clean ups.

“As a result, people both use the parks more and have a sense of responsibility for them which cuts down on problems like vandalism.”