THINGS are coming up roses for the green-fingered and community-conscious residents of the Oldpark.
For this week, householders in Cardigan Drive in the North Belfast district took part in a community flower-planting extravaganza to spruce up their area.
The joint initiative was a response to what locals says was a poor standard of cleansing in the area.
On Monday, Sinn Féin’s Carál Ní Chuilín joined residents of Cardigan Drive to put down roots.
And the North Belfast MLA praised residents for taking pride in their area.
Hugging trees in Cardigan Drive. Helping with residents with cleanup, taking weeds out & planting flowers at base of trees. @belfastcc cleaned the streets & residents came out to show their appreciation. Maith sibhse, well done to all involved #LoveWhereYouLive 💝 pic.twitter.com/isuLKBPl7u
— Carál 😷 Ní Chuilín-Nigh do lámha ✊ (@CaralNiChuilin) April 26, 2021
“Sinn Féin had recently raised the concerns of local people about the standard of cleansing in this area," said Ms Ní Chuilín.
“I welcome the recent improvement in the standard of cleansing services and hope this level of service continues. When agencies step up to meet their responsibilities, residents meet them more than half-way as we see here today. People are taking ownership of the streets and planting beautiful flowers around the trees. It’s about council giving residents the confidence to know that their efforts will be matched with clean streets and it is also about a strong sense of pride in North Belfast.
Cardigan Drive resident, Nuala Stroud was delighted to see residents take pride in their street. “This has really snowballed in recent weeks and there are loads of flowers blooming as a result," she said. “The council have upped their game cleaning the streets which has helped massively. And it is lovely to see neighbours helping to plant flowers outside homes of some of our older neighbours who want to take part but aren’t able."
