Parade Gardens is looking in fine shape to welcome Easter, Spring and the first of the tourists of the new season. That’s not to say this little park beside the River Avon isn’t loved by its residents also – because it surely is.
B&NES Parks Department is – as usual and with an ever-decreasing budget I suspect – ensuring that flower beds produce the expected annual display of colourful blooms.

This winter they’ve cleared the area around the Pets Cemetery and exposed the slightly meagre remains of the Monks Mill – a water mill once powered by the flowing waters of the river alongside.

They have been tidied up and will be enhanced with climbing plants – and with an information board explaining their significance.
The bandstand has been re-roofed and there are plans to disguise the monumental and ugly outline of an electricity sub-station – a mini-example of brutalism – in some more appealing and artistic way.

Well done to all l say. Only one thing lets you down now – and that’s the broken B&NES flag – pictured hanging limply on its flagpost.