Here’s a quickie report on the Town Council’s street furniture project. Where are we? And what have we still got to do? In no particular order:
- All the new seating, planters and litter bins need washing down.
- Then a black paint touch up where required of everything when we have a couple of days’ good weather forecast.
- Some light oiling of the Iroko wood on seating and planters where required e.g. one of the planters has been scraped on a top edge during transit and will need sanding etc.
- The Silver Birch trees will be watered on a regular basis and they have already been drenched but we need to do it again shortly to give them a good kick off.
- Some planters need ‘levelling off’ and further ground fixings.
- Watering tubes to be cut to top soil level.
- Three in number planters at the mouth of Fore Street Car Park will be
moved to their permanent positions fronting the pavement this week. The current bollards need to be removed and motorcyclists have been requested to park away from the edge of the pavement on ‘installation day (there is plenty of room to allow for this).
- The tree root balls are secured below surface with 4 wooden batten ‘cross members’ in each planter which will eventually rot away plus gravel at the base and membrane for better drainage via 5 drainage holes.
- The positioning of the 3 in number planters outside Peacocks are likely to be tweaked to their final places.
- Positioning of planters at the courtesy crossings is driven by Devon County Council’s requirement for 450mm distance from the edge of the pavement.
- Non-levelling of all the seating was a conscious decision e.g. bench at the Catholic Church which has to negotiate the steep Fore Street incline. Should we have lifted the bottom legs by several inches? The bench itself would then look have looked pretty ridiculous etc. So all seating was tested in situ and the upshot is that when you are actually sat down they are comfortable and the incline tends to evaporate.
- It has been suggested for slate pieces to be added to the planters with accompanying blue grasses (Festuca glauca ‘Blaufuchs’).
In summary, we wished to get the new seating and planters in position as soon as they landed but there is still some work to do!! Watch this space.