Description May 1897

The following description of Victoria Park was published in the Cardiff Times and South Wales Weekly News in May 1897,[1] a few weeks before the park was officially named and opened.

Entering from the Cowbridge-road you pass first of all through the rosery, a series of six beds lying around a centre bed as the petals of a flower surround the reproductory organs in the centre. These beds are filled with healthy looking bush roses, and in the future should form a delightful retreat. Beyond this, walking towards the centre of the park, lies a pretty lake of graceful form so ingeniously constructed that at no part is the whole of it visible. Around portions of the banks are planted shrubs of hardy type, rhododendrons occubas, and dwarf firs with here and there a double flowering cherry to lend gentle relief. On the far side of the lake is a shelter of the kind to be found in the other parks, and beyond this again in the midst of a series of paths which radiate from it is the fine open space on which the bandstand is to be erected. Smooth, velvety turf, green and level, fills all the space between the paths. Around the other extremities of the park are beds filled with fine perennials already sprouting vigorously, and these are backed by shrubs in groups so that the blue lupin and the pink-tinted phlox will have for background drooping deodaras and golden-tipped cupressus. Even at this time of the year a good deal of colour is leant by the dense, deep yellow blooms of the double gorse which is flourishing in several befitting corners. At the far end of the park from the roadway is two and a quarter acres of grass that is to be devoted to the children. No rough games are to be allowed here, but it is space enough for the youngsters to play in their own little way, while nursemaids and mothers sit and gossip hard by in the pretty little shelter that overlooks the ground. It is in the middle of this children's playground that the old cannon that formally grew rusty in the back of the Town Hall yard is to be turned out to graze, and it will be set upon rostrum befitting its age, rusty timbers, and venerable and war like associations.

But there is another feature of the park that needs remark. Of old time it was a treeless swamp, but now some stalwart trees rear their height 40 feet above the grass. Near the road is a big silver birch, most graceful of forest trees. Hard by is a copper beech, near the lake is a fine mulberry tree, and not many yards away is a lofty elm towers up and lends a sense of proportion to the view. These trees have all been transplanted and placed in their present position within the past few months. It has been a great work, and one, too, that has been carried out most successfully, for great oblong brown buds cover all the extremities of the copper beech, while the birch is already unfolding its tender green. These trees have all been moved by the aid of a big machine whereby, after digging round the roots to the depth of nine feet, the tree and roots together with a large ball of earth are lifted bodily up and placed upon wheels, which enable them to be removed to a spot to which it is desired to move them. The invention has seldom been previously utilised outside France, but the success which has attended its efforts in the case now before us should tend to popularise its use in this country. The introduction of these fine forest trees, all of which are looking well, adds in no small measure to the beauty of the new park which, as soon as the shrubs have grown up and the young trees have taken firm root, will prove a paradise to the western district of crowded Cardiff.

Sources of Information

  1. Cardiff's new park approaching completion. Cardiff Times and South Wales Weekly News, Saturday May 1st 1897 page 3