Bikes locked to young trees

Wednesday, July 6, 2011: It's amazing to see the increase of the fine people of our city and visitors the park are riding bicycles to and fro.  Nothing sweeter than seeing groups of folk relaxing in park with a cluster of bikes beside.  Though, it is clear, there are not enough bikes racks to secure the bikes to whilst enjoying the green space.  Parks/Forestry have just planted many (see article below) new saplings and locking a bike can be potentially damaging to their survival.  They are just getting over the shock of being planted and bikes/locks can break their tender bark and invite disease.  This is so not cool.  So we ask everyone, if you love the park/trees to please, please, DO NOT LOCK YOUR BIKE TO YOUNG AND NEWLY PLANTED TREES.   The Friends will be looking into how we can get more bike racks on the perimeter of the park to help resolve this situation.  Thank you!

UPDATE July 30, 2011;  There are now about 5 trees slated - bright flourescent sprayed dot on trunk - to be cut down.  Will probably happen before the fall.  Thus, the successive planting and care of the new trees planted all the more prudent.  We need them to survive. Thank you to all the adopt-a-tree'ers for doing your thang.  Thank you to patrons that don't look your bikes to trees.

UPDATE July 20, 2011: The park has another mature damaged tree marked for removal this week, and one of the newly planted trees has been vandalised and will likely die.  All the more reason to not use the young saplings as a bike rack so that it will survive unscathed to maturity to replace the lost trees.