Award-winning parks make the Capital's rivals green with envy

ON a rare sunny summer's day, Inverleith Park, from the allotments at the north west corner to the playground near the entrance to the Royal Botanic Garden, is peppered with people: mums with children, dog walkers, cyclists, joggers and lunchtime office workers.

Tennis players work up a sweat on each of the park's four courts. Next door, children shoot hoops in the basketball court and two older gents blether during a sedate game of petanque.

And there's Philip Thompson, half way up one of Inverleith Park's many towering trees. He's hooked a rope around one of the sturdier branches, hoisted himself skyward and is now hacking at a limb which has been hanging precariously, damaged earlier by the wind.

From his vantage point, the city council parks department's trainee arborist can look down on Inverleith's many users across 54 acres of open space, sandwiched between the bustle of Stockbridge and Comely Bank and the elegant Botanic Garden, across its calm pond and towards the spire of Fettes College and beyond to the striking vista of Edinburgh Castle and Arthur's Seat.

He's at the heart of one of the largest urban parks in Scotland, one of the select few in the country to receive a prestigious Green Flag award in recognition of its outstanding quality.

Edinburgh City Council today takes receipt of eight new Green Flags to add to the five it already has, bringing the total of award-winning parks to 13, which is more than any other local authority in Scotland.

As well as Inverleith Park, flags will soon fly at the more compact Station Road Park in South Queensferry, Figgate Park in Portobello, Craigmillar Castle Park, Corstorphine Hill, Portobello Community Garden, Burdiehouse Burn Valley Park and London Road Gardens.

In addition, Corstorphine Hill Walled Garden, cared for by a local community friends organisation, has been awarded a Green Pennant Community Award.

The honours, from the Green Flag Plus Partnership, a conglomerate of various environmental groups including Keep Britain Tidy, come just a week after the city achieved its best ever rating for the cleanliness of its streets.

Keep Scotland Beautiful scored Edinburgh 72 out of 100 after assessing levels of litter, dog fouling, graffiti, fly posting and fly tipping.

According to David Jamieson, parks and green spaces manager, the parks' Green Flag awards are a major achievement for the department's 220 staff. "There are just 26 parks with Green Flag status across Scotland and we're proud to be able to say we have 13 of them," he says.

Award-winning parks must meet 27 separate areas of criteria, the main one being that the authority which submits them for consideration has a full management masterplan for each one. That ruled out the city's most famous parks, Princes Street Gardens and The Meadows, where such long-term plans are currently not in place.

"The criteria ranges from whether the entry points to the park are welcoming, does it look attractive, the quality of the footpaths, the ground maintenance, the historic landscape, the flower displays and the biodiversity - is it a good park for wildlife?," adds Mr Jamieson.

In response to that, he points out a bird box half way up the tree, just below where 18-year-old apprentice Philip has been working. And as the Bonnyrigg teenager swings around the trunk aiming to tidy up another branch, a passer-by stops to shout a warning to look out for the owls he's seen nesting within the tree's trunk.

He's one of the few to even notice Philip and fellow apprentice arborist James Doig, 20, are there. For most of us, the day to day task of maintaining Edinburgh's 145 parks and green spaces - stretching to 1500 hectares of land in all - goes largely unnoticed.

Yet for the 220 people who work for the parks and green spaces department - from behind the scenes office workers and managers to the likes of Stephen Donnelly, 22, a trainee horticulturist who is proud to have just helped complete the task of planting Princes Street Gardens' floral clock - park life is much more than a sunny summer's day outing.

Stephen, from Port Seton, is among an army of parks' staff who provide colour and contrast in hundreds of floral displays across the city - and, he reveals, it's a surprisingly competitive task.

"Everyone wants to do the floral clock," he says with a grin. "Some people pretend they're not interested, but really most of us want to do it because you know it's what so many people see.

"This is a year-round job," he adds. "There's always something to do, it's not like we stop during winter."

The staff's efforts have paid off. The city council is about to become Scotland's only "Green Flag authority" which means its award winning parks will be checked on a "mystery shopper" style basis every year to ensure they maintain high standards.

But Mr Jamieson admits there is still plenty of work to do to improve some parks. And with its 6 million annual budget under threat from cuts, the challenge will be to maintain and improve on this year's success.

"Vandalism is a problem," he says. "Trees, benches, play equipment tend to be affected and we do struggle in some places with anti-social behaviour which has huge resource implications for us. This time of year we find we have problems with people using barbecues and burning the grass. We actually find that the better maintained and cared for a park is, the less anti-social behaviour. If there's an active "friends" group - and there are 35 across the city - there tend to be fewer problems."

The Green Flag Plus Partnership has handed out over 1000 Green Flags to high quality parks across the UK since 1996.

Environmental leader Councillor Robert Aldridge says: "It is fantastic to see our parks get the recognition they deserve, having the most Green Flags in Scotland.

"The scheme has proved to be a great success and I would like to congratulate all the staff who have worked hard to maintain our parks and green spaces and help keep them beautiful."