The star is the centre piece of the park and the Council plant bedding plants in it twice a year.  This year, the Friends have done their best to keep it tidy.  The star is a bit dull this year and this is because almost half of this year’s geraniums have been uprooted or damaged.  We keep replanting them but you can see the gaps, particularly near the top in the photo below.

Vandalism and inadvertent damage are not serious issues at Starbank Park but the star isn’t the only problem area. Many of the rosemary plants round the edge of the terrace border have been flattened since the border was revamped last winter.

After all the excitement with the wine and cheese party and cutting back the terrace hedge, it was back to normal today with aIt was the usual weeding, tidying and digging.  But we are beginning to feel that the weeds are starting to lose and it was a lovely sunny morning.  

After a long exhausting chase, Sandy managed to catch this fine green caterpillar.  I don’t know what it is and, while I’m sure it was not eating the weeds, we still put it back near where we found it.

We had a brilliant wine and cheese evening on Thursday night.  It was a fitting celebration of a year of great progress.  The weather was glorious, there was a great turn-out, almost 50, and we had a great time.  Definitely worth repeating!

Also, thanks to Fields in Trust for their goodie box which certainly added to the occasion.

The terrace hedge has now been cut! We have taken off about 90cm all the way round and the view from the benches of Fife and the Firth of Forth has been restored.  

It was a substantial undertaking by hand and we cut off an awful lot of hedge; you can see it piled up against the wall!

First ever wet Wednesday, and we started about 9 months ago!  Eight hardy souls came along today and, after chatting for a while, we realised that the rain had almost gone off.  We put the time to good use and did some weeding and cut some more of the terrace hedge.  It’s been a pretty big undertaking but it will be finished soon!

Stan has used up all the mulch on the perimeter borders.  It’s made a huge difference. But there’s still a lot to cover and we hope we can get some more to finish the job.

We’ve been cutting back the hedge at the terrace border so that you can see the view.  It’s not finished yet but the improvement is quite clear from these “before and after” cutting views from the benches.

And we weeded some more, flower borders, gutters and paths!  Just look at the nice clean borders!

The park is looking good in the sunshine.

We are still busy, battling away against the weeds , cutting the hedges back and generally tidying the park