Residents say tourists eager to get the perfect snap in Canterbury's Westgate Gardens have trashed public flower beds in an "an absolute tragedy” for the city.
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00:00The area, the other side of these flower borders here, there's a grass area and they've been
00:10continually walking on that area, which has worn the grass all the way and it's destroying
00:17the beauty of the area. They've now started standing in amongst the flower beds, trampling
00:24the flowers and it's so disrespectful. I feel quite sad that the gardens are being
00:30ruined. It's mainly the tourists, it's not local vandalism. The tourists seem to think
00:38they can get these fantastic photographs of the flower beds, but in doing so they're not
00:45respecting the flower beds and they're standing on, in amongst them now, which is actually
00:51causing a real problem. I think we need better signage. There's hardly any sign saying keep
00:57off the flowers and keep off the grass, so some better signage all along this railings
01:03would be good. Tourists have been walking on them trying to get good photos, so understandably
01:16having photos in the foreground and background of the photo looks quite nice, but as a result
01:20they've been stepping over the barrier, walking all over the grass and in some cases walking
01:26sort of pathways through the flower beds. And what's the effect that this has on other
01:31people that like to enjoy the park? I think for locals who live around here and like the
01:38site, particularly the houses opposite, that detracts from the site. I mean it also has
01:45to sort of affect the flowers of bringing those people here in the first place, so it
01:51might be a price that we need to accept. But I do think that if there was a bigger sign
01:56or some more obvious signage down the paths, or maybe even a warden that was put in charge
02:01of the area around here, that this sort of thing could be kept at a minimum.