Work to start in four parks and gardens

Our exciting plans to transform some of the city’s parks and gardens through our Connected Canterbury project are coming along nicely.

As part of this, you will notice some early work taking place at four sites over the next couple of weeks – the Dane John Gardens, Canterbury Castle grounds, Greyfriars Gardens and the Three Cities Garden.

This will involve some shrub and vegetation clearance and some crown lifting of trees (not tree felling) and has been timed for now to ensure we are complete before the start of the bird nesting season.

This is the basic equivalent of a private homeowner clearing out overgrown vegetation from their garden prior to a revamp, but just on a bigger scale and right in the public eye.

The majority of the shrub clearance is the removal of overgrown non-native species that you might describe as having ‘got a bit out of hand’. These areas will be replaced with new planting such as wildflower meadows and perennial flower beds.

The new landscape and planting scheme has been designed by HTA, a landscape architect company who are currently designing a new garden in London’s Regent’s Park to commemorate the life of Queen Elizabeth II, and leading planting designer and writer Noel Kingsbury.

We want people to be reassured that while some areas may look a bit bare for a while, this is simply a necessary part of the process in order to achieve what we believe will be fantastic looking parks a few months down the line.

The picture above shows some of the area around the Dane John Mound where work will take place, and for which there is a landscaping and planting scheme.

Published: 14 February 2025