Olympic-Themed Garden Is Now in Bloom!
Inspired by the 2012 Games, the spectacular garden, sponsored by Serco, Charnwood Borough Council’s environmental services partner, is located near the children’s play area. It has been designed to welcome visitors into the landscape with stepping stones and paths weaving through the flower beds.
The flower beds are home to unique sculptures and the garden was officially opened by Councillor Diane Wise, the Mayor of Charnwood, with the ceremony also including a recital at the Queen’s Park Carillon.
Bursting with colour, the garden aims to impress for Loughborough In Bloom and to be a lasting legacy for Loughborough and visitors to the park.
The concept and design were created by local firm, The Cloud Factory, and the landscape work delivered by Serco and the council’s Green Spaces team.
Councillor Hilary Fryer, the Council’s Cabinet Member for Cleansing and Open Spaces, said: “This has been a remarkable collaboration. It was a great challenge this year with the weather and we had a particularly bad June, but I think the end results are marvellous.
“I think the area is unrecognisable from how it looked at the start of the year. It is the perfect site for the Celebration Garden as it is right by the play area.”
Children from nine Leicestershire schools have also put their little green fingers to work and created flowery ‘grow men’ – figures made from a soil-filled sack planted with flowers and fashioned into little people – which now sit in each of the flower beds.
The schools involved were Wymeswold Primary; Woolden Hill Primary, Anstey; Seagrave Village Primary; Thorpe Acre Primary, Loughborough; St Mary's Catholic Primary, Loughborough; St Bartholomew's CofE Primary, Quorn; Holywell Primary, Loughborough; Hathern CofE Primary and St Botolph's, Shepshed
A group of youngsters from St Botolph’s explained their involvement in the project and Cllr Fryer added: “It was delightful to see and hear about the contribution from youngsters at St Botolph’s School.
“The benches in the garden have also been recycled from trees which had to be felled in woods across Loughborough because they were diseased.”
Diana Brass, chairperson of the Friends of Queen’s Park, who also held a fund-raising raffle on the day, said: “I think what has been achieved is magnificent when you take into account that we have experienced the worst of weather over the past few weeks.”
Tim Guile, Partnership Director for Serco, said: “It has an Olympic theme plus lots of little things which schoolchildren have put in and I think the end result is stunning .”
