The Hanging Gardens of Coventry (sic)

Coventry has many public gardens; a map of the City is splashed with green spots showing municipal, multipurpose parks with trees, shrubs and vast areas of grass on which to play football or cricket and where families picnic and enjoy fresh air and playground facilities. Most suburbs have small parks or gardens, which are carefully tended to bring colour and life to the community.

Each spring work goes on to prepare for "Britain in Bloom", a competition which entices cities, towns, villages and hamlets across the land compete to be the most flowery - I'm sure it's not as simple as that but you get the idea. So, in Coventry huge, plastic cubes of colourful plants are off loaded from trucks and sited in every public space, hanging baskets are draped from lampposts, and barriers which divide the carriageways of major roads, are festooned with troughs of blooms. In the middle of the night bowsers roam the streets to feed and water these minature gardens.

At the heart of the City, a millennium regeneration project unearthed the remains of an ancient priory and cathedral, Coventry's first; there are now three cathedrals in the centre of the city all within 300m; unusual if not unique. The ruins, flanked by the original, timber framed Blue Coats School, which demonstrates another aspect of Coventry's heritage, have been crafted into a novel public space in which visitors may wander among the unearthed foundations of the old sacred building. From a point on a bridge overlooking the site you can see all three cathedrals along with the spired church of Holy Trinity and a contemporary Visitor Centre. Each and every element of this scene has been carefully lit with lamps of varying sizes and focus, to enhance the visitor's experience. The name of this site is Priory Gardens and save for the ivy that clings to the walls of the perimeter and the mature trees of the nearby graveyard, no plants grow. Impressive.

I visited on a lovely, breezy evening as dusk fell, I anticipated the glow from a myriad of golden lamps, ever more vibrant as the sky darkened into an inky blue.

All was in darkness. So I photographed the Council House.

http://www.iankerr.com

Europe / UK-England

Lat: 52° 24' 26" N
Long: 2° 31' 29" W

→ maps.google.com [EXT]

Precision is: High. Pinpoints the exact spot.