‘Disrespectful tourists trashing our flower beds for Instagram photos'
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.