Yes, the end of an era … We are no longer involved with the planter at Preston Circus. Some of us first started planting up planters there back in 2011 and 2012.

In 2013, we were awarded funding for planting up four abandoned planters at the Circus. We also organised a workshop guided by Bridget and Deborah at The Garden House. We planted up the four planters in different schemes, and for a while they thrived. We also obtained funding for a water butt installed at the Calvary Church.

There was then a Council initiative to ‘declutter’ at Preston Circus and remove the black planters and the railings. The planters were moved up Viaduct Rd where they have functioned as traffic calming devices. Meanwhile, the area outside the Duke of York’s cinema was resurfaced to create a more pleasant pedestrian space, the Duke of York’s put out cafe chairs and tables and the Council commissioned a custom-designed planter and planting plan, which we agreed to help maintain. That was in 2016-17.

The original planting for the new planter aimed to be drought-tolerant: lavenders, rosemary and achillea were among the plants selected. Sadly, the very strong winds and summer droughts meant that the original plants did not thrive. Over the years, we re-planted the planter with a variety of plants: some thrived, e.g. the old sedum we inherited from replanting at The Level, and some beautiful dianthus; quite a few didn’t and some – increasingly – were simply removed by passers by. Why anyone would want to uproot a straggly rosemary that we were nurturing is beyond me, but depressingly, it happened.

With the pandemic, our efforts came to a standstill but we replanted in the spring of 2021 with a range of foliage plants propagated in our gardens, and in fact, they survived well through last summer.

Sadly, Brighton and Hove City Council saw fit to place four large dumpster bins in front of, and then right next to, our poor old planter. This has meant that people started dumping rubbish in the planter and it was clear that maintaining it was going to be tricky without the heavy dumpsters being moved. This last winter, the wood on the side of the planter next to the dumpsters has rotted.

We were ready in May this year to start replanting and renovating the planter; we were particularly excited as we applied for and received a voucher from the Council for purchasing pollinator flowering plants. We asked for the dumpsters to be moved away from the planter.

However, for whatever reasons, this has not happened, and more rubbish has been dumped on the planter. Sadly, the Duke of York’s ‘square’ seems destined to be a rubbish collection point, rather than the pleasant ‘square’ we imagined back in 2015-16, so we felt it was pointless to invest any further energy in bringing the planter back into bloom. We’ve removed the plants that were growing there, and notified the Council we will no longer maintain the planter.

It was always a difficult site, and has perhaps become more difficult over the years. Increasingly, we ‘lost’ showy flowering plants shortly after they were planted. It was sometimes an effort trekking down to Preston Circus and carrying full watering cans from the Calvary Church to the Duke of York’s.

But wouldn’t it be wonderful if Brighton and Hove City Council could ‘declutter’ their own dumpster bins and find an alternative way of collecting refuse? Continental cities manage to construct local refuse collection points underground with a limited surface presence. Sadly, we’ve not got there yet … and so we continue to live with huge unsightly black dumpsters, and ‘our’ planter is no more.