A CITY BEAUTIFUL

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 14, 17 January 1924, Page 6

A CITY BEAUTIFUL

TO IHI EDITOR,

Sir,—Many:,,thanks for'your clear and full report in last Saturday's issue on garden improvements in city and suburbs. It should be an all sufficient answer to the gentlemen who paint us drab and who can have no eye for beauty in plant life. I am free to say that during the last twenty years Wellington has improved her surroundings quite as much as any town m the Dominion. It is absurd-to think we can make her a second ■Christchurch or Auckland. We have not their possibilities but we can make her a very beautiful Wellington, and this is going on all the time; quite as quickly as cir" cumstances will allow us, we are piling up the rates, and this must go on rent. But the city beautiful is on the sky line -jjMouht Victoria next year, when colour effects from flowers, shrubs, and trees, will brighten up the whole city, then the wireless, and we shall have a "Wellington j £ c,P roud 0", but do let us stop that drop business, and take a walk through .the city gardens just now. See the begonia house, and say drab, if you can. Our space is small, but the gardening is intense,' and if someone would only give another house or two, and a decent one for the workers, we could show against all comers. The present display is an exhibition of colour in plant life that would he a credit to London but what pleased me most was the statement that Queen Victoria statue was to be removed to a morn suitable site. When taken from the Post Office site I advocated Newtown Park, but v"l no ""* out of the question. It would be scant honour to anyone to send uA^' 200' For-years "I have saluted the Queen and apologised to her that my fellow citizens could'find her nothing better to look at than the Destructor chimney. Where should the Queen he placed?- Royalty represents the whole British- Constitution, and her proper place is in the Parliamentary Wounds. Ihe; Government should be pleased to have her there, and -remove the statue themselves for the honour. then comes that war memorial. I have known my Wellington for sixty years, and-have not known her backward When a good cause was rightly placed before her. I hope to have' a stone in the memorial, jmt I would not give a pebble if it _' to. be placed behind the Royal Oak Why before many years the Oak itself, m part or whole," will be removed to ease the congestion of the locality. Picture fathers and mothers come to see the memorial of their boys— off the tram at Bank. corner, cross to bmitns corner, cross again to the Oak 2 ?° f be, rt "■■«!«» trying perpetual motion but he can't leave his post- to pilot them. Hence they must be the quick or the dead and this is proposed after the removal from th 6 Post Office Square, and in one of the most unsightly positions m the city for such a purposef True* some statuary is long overdue 'in Wellington, and I'think if properly placed before our citizens would be forthcominV' beginning with (1) Major Kemp/and vL T^'- v. alhes. 4 the Maoris; (2) Major ' Yon Tgftipskv and a host of other Wei-'' lingtomans-Hunter, Pilmer, and others, who stood between Wellington and dis^ aster; (3) theii to our African boys commemorating our first aid-to England, xvl °^ eT''^ (4' then the Great ■t aii^;?'4 1 bftP'-iceiin : the entrance to the^Botanical Gardens, where they would b». environed in perpetual glory, mght and day, planted amidst the symbols of immortality. The City Council could see that a bright light illumin- = ated them at night. It could be done.I am,' etc.,

1 2tlijahuary; TR00PER P' 1864'