For me, it’s the jewel in the city’s horticultural crown.
Bath’s Parade Gardens has scooped a coveted Trip Advisor Travellers Choice Award.
The awards recognise the best visitor attractions across the world and are based on traveller reviews and ratings.
Councillor Paul Crossley, cabinet member for Community Services, said: “This is a wonderful accolade for Parade Gardens and our dedicated Park’s team who maintain the gardens and ensure they look stunning year-round. To be rated by Trip Advisor as one of the top ten per cent of visitor attractions in the world is a fantastic achievement and means a great deal to us because it’s based on visitor reviews.
“Our Parks team has worked hard over recent years to breathe new life into Parade Gardens, transforming it into a glorious jewel in Bath’s crown. All our heritage parks and green spaces are precious and have been designed to fit in with the cityscape and Bath’s culture. It was of course previous generations who made Bath a green city and we owe it to not only them but also current and future generations to retain our historic parks green spaces, nuture them and enhance them.”
Laid out in 1933/34 on the site of the 18th and 19th century pleasure gardens, Parade Gardens sit in the heart of Bath and are a wonderful place to relax and people-watch. Much loved by residents and tourists alike the gardens help support the city centre economy.
In recognition of this over, the past five years the Parks team have worked hard to revitalise the gardens. They created a new narrative for the gardens as a 1930’s style village green, complete with a bandstand, stripy deckchairs and an air of quiet sophistication within a beautiful Cotswold setting.
Once reimagined, incremental improvements were made including:
- replacing all the wooden benches with brand new ones
- buying stripy deckchairs for visitors to relax in, to create a more vintage atmosphere
- taking over the Café from the previous external lease holder enabling the council to extend the season and control the standard of catering
- finding sponsors for the 3D flower bed which is renewed annually
- renovating all borders and the Pets’ Cemetery
- working with the Community Payback team to regularly repaint benches and railings
- opened-up more of the park for recreational enjoyment
- reduced anti-social behaviour by selectively reducing shrubberies and replanting
This summer one of the borders in Parade Gardens has been dedicated to the NHS workers in recognition of their frontline-work during the pandemic. It’s now decorated with multi-coloured pebbles.
Painting and planting has continued throughout the summer months with the Parks team now focusing on welcoming visitors again in 2021.
PS. Both the Roman Baths and the Mayor of Bath’s Corps of Honorary Guides have also recently scooped this award.
