Waterlow Park

• I WOULD like to put in a quiet word about Waterlow Park in response to, (Whole park is a nature area, Helen Rapley, March 31).

Some of us will remember September 2016 when we, the Friends of Waterlow Park, its main user group, put on what we called A Lark in the Park.

Hundreds of people came that day to eat, drink, make merry, watch plays, roll down slopes, ride on donkeys, talk to farm animals and celebrate 125 years of this “garden for the gardenless”.

It was quite a day and it took an enormous amount of work. But that’s what the friends have been doing since the 1990s; putting in an enormous amount of work, as volunteers, to support this lovely park.

This year we will help pay to repair the shepherd and shepherdess statues, provide skilled volunteers to grow plants, sell them and advise customers at our regular plant sales, start a biodiversity survey of the park’s plant culture, repeat our successful free summer concert season and work with charities for personal wellbeing who also volunteer in the park.

So it mystifies the friends’ committee why anyone would think that we have any other agenda than to see the park thrive and give pleasure to a diverse user group.

We pour money into the park, so why would we let any part of it be sold to a private concern, that is, privatised?

However we should be telling our children about the natural world around them and there is lots to learn in the park.

Hence, after much thought the biodiversity group, consisting of specialists from Camden, TCV, idverde and the friends, advised Camden that the upper ponds surrounding area needed to close to visitors for a season in order to regenerate.

They cast around for a possible alternative nature study area, particularly with children in mind, and chose the small woodland area at the north end of the park.

The public consultation in February this year asked people what they thought of the idea and invited comments on some suggested changes and improvements to the area.

We hope their views can be taken as “intelligent and considered” even though Ms Rapley thinks they did not have enough information to go on.

During the consultation Ms Rapley assumed a commercial school group offering bookings for the new site (until corrected) meant the park was about to be privatised and started an online petition to ward this off. She was asked by Camden to take it down as it was inaccurate. This has not happened.

The committee is very sorry that people have been unnecessarily worried for the future of their park. All because of a suggestion briefly to fence off a tiny area for nature study.

We hope that the community will now realise there is no threat of privatisation, no deal with business groups for profit and no insistence on enclosure or exclusion.

Let’s wait and see what people have said in an “intelligent and considered” way in response to the consultation. And enjoy a happy summer in our park.

FIONA MURPHY
Chair, Friends of Waterlow Park