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Scouter's Articles
| Scouts help clear park |
| Written by Ryan Hultzer |
| Saturday, 19 November 2005 17:44 |
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Scouts help clear park To view the actual newspaper article click here: Tygertalk 2 February 2006 (JPG 465 kb) In late November 2005, Scouts from the 1st Durbanville Scout Group joined up with Dr Leonore van Rensburg and her husband Prof J.J. Heydenrych to clear up the Heyde-Burg Park in Durbanville. The Heyde-Burg Park is the stretch of land that lies in the Fairtrees area, following the Kuils River in Durbanville. The park can be publicly accessed from Merry Rocks Street in Tara, from Werda Road near the new Fairtrees Estate, and from Lynwood Road.The Scouts decided to help out as a part of the 1st Durbanville Scout Group’s initiative to help the community of Durbanville, and let Durbanville know that Scouts are an essential part of our community. The Scouts’ job included planting a few trees, watering the trees and clearing weeds from around the young trees so as to give them a better chance of survival. Ryan Hultzer, spokesperson for the 1st Durbanville Scout Group says: “1st Durbanville Scout Group is always keen to help out both the community and the environment. We were very keen to help develop this park, and enjoyed the time we spent there. I hope that the Durbanville Community will embrace the park by using it and helping maintaining it.” Dr van Rensburg and Prof Heydenrych have been planting trees in this area for 30 years, so as to create a beautiful park for the community to enjoy. They have planted over 400 trees, including Yellow Wood, White Stink Wood, Palms, Oak, Campher, and Willow trees. In the park you will also spot many birds such as Guineafowls, Peacocks, geese, Sugarbirds, Finches, Red bishops and Swallows. Says Dr van Rensburg: “I have started to develop the park because of my love for trees. I see great potential for the area, as the park is a beautiful area with the Kuils river running through it.” Before Dr van Rensburg began in the park, the area was a wilderness of Port Jackson with lots of rubbish lying around. Now it is a beautiful park with thriving trees growing taller by the day. With the extreme rate of development within South Africa, we need to develop parks full of trees to prevent South Africa from becoming a drought stricken country. One idea suggested by Dr van Rensburg is that families should “adopt a tree.” This means that a family makes themselves responsible for planting and watering a tree in an open area near them. This has proven to work in Israel where each family planted ten trees, transforming some of Israel’s deserts to thriving forests.  This huge job cannot be done by Dr van Rensburg and Prof Heydenrych alone. The Durbanville municipality should take the responsibility of cutting the lawn once a month, and cleaning up litter and weeds in the river which are damaging the canal. The pathways in the park need to be extended, and the park could do with micro-jet irrigation or drip irrigation system. At the moment, most of the trees are watered by bucket by Prof Heydenrych, or from a tap that was provided by the Municipality. The municipality have recently cut the lawn and cleared the weeds from the canal. Ryan Hultzer: “I would like to encourage people to use and care for the Heyde-Burg park. Thanks to Dr van Rensburg and her husband, Prof Heydenrych, for all the hard work done over the years and thanks to all the scouts who helped.” |
| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 17 September 2008 22:22 ) |
