Keep your cables out of my roses!
A DURBAN man’s fear of losing his award-winning, beloved verge rose garden to technology was put to bed this week when a fibre-optic installer chose the blooms over profit.
Hundreds of residents were appalled when James Easton complained on social media that his manicured rows of roses on a municipal verge on Mvule Road were at risk as contractors were digging up verges in the suburb of Glen Anil to install fibre-optic cables.
Easton, an award-winning landscaper, described himself as a “sitting duck”, waiting for the garden he had started growing eight years before to be dug up.
“I started this garden because the verge was a ghastly sight. It was riddled with weeds and was just a terrible space that needed to be beautified,” he said.
I started this garden because the verge was a ghastly sight. It was riddled with weeds and was just a terrible space that needed to be beautified
Despite the initial cost of about R20 000 and the monthly upkeep of about R4 500, Easton went all out with a specialised irrigation system, garden accessories and, of course, his time.
“There are about 200 roses there. Within my property there are close to 600 roses. People stop at my verge garden just to take a breath, while some residents actually take a longer route to work so they can pass it every day.”
The eye-catching garden had been recognised in the city’s best verge initiative. A few years ago, the garden had won a R75 000 prize from a hardware chain.
When contractors moved into the area and started digging up his driveway last week, Easton scrambled to save his blooms: “I contacted the contractor on site about the possibility of saving my garden and he didn’t indicate that it was possible. Then I decided that I would approach the municipality to adopt the spot.”
But the municipality’s adopt-a-spot initiative was reserved for plots where illegal dumping was prevalent. By Wednesday, Easton felt helpless: the only option — digging up and replanting the roses — would kill them.
After the main contractor, Infraconnect, was alerted to the social media brouhaha over the garden, it decided to save it: “We are going to drill 1.5m under the garden and come out the other side, instead of digging a trench. It would have cost us about R4 000 to ‘trench’ [and the] drilling will cost between R35 000 and R37 000, but it is worth it because the garden uplifts the entire area,” Infraconnect said.
Easton was thrilled to learn his garden was safe: “I have no words. I was so stressed. I could not even work properly; I was convinced that my garden would be gone,” he said. ONE SMALL SEED: James Easton stands among his roses on his verge in Durban North. The garden started as an idea to uplift the neighbourhood