A small army of dedicated volunteers have been credited with helping to keep Perth and Kinross beautiful amid cuts to council services.
Perth and Kinross Council maintains around 1,600 sites, ranging from parks of regional significance such as MacRosty Park and the North Inch to war memorials, burial grounds and small local green spaces.
Due to resource limitations, the local authority has been forced to focus on the high priority parks and open space sites.
The burden of maintaining hundreds of other sites has therefore fallen to local people and they have been praised for the quality and selflessness of their efforts.
Their successes will be highlighted at a meeting of the environment committee next week at which the Community Greenspace team will detail how the partnerships have “taken pressure off” the cash-strapped council.
By working closely with communities, officials say the quality of green spaces across the region has been maintained and even improved.
A total of 46 groups are now members of the Take a Pride in Perthshire Campaign, which has a common purpose to make towns and villages better and more attractive places to live in and visit.
That effort is sustained by 450 committee members, hundreds of volunteers and 20,250 hours of voluntary effort carried out on an annual basis.
The results are clear, with many of the communities involved achieving outstanding success in national and international environmental improvement campaigns including Beautiful Scotland and Britain in Bloom.
In fact, the council believes the partnership working and volunteer engagement has also created a sense of “ownership” of green spaces, boosting community pride.
While all manner of work is going on throughout Perth and Kinross, one of the most high profile successes of recent years has been the transformation of MacRosty Park in Crieff.
Work began on an ambitious £1.8 million rejuvenation of the historic park in 2010 and is still ongoing, led by the Friends of MacRosty Park, with support from the council and Heritage Lottery Fund.
In recent years, the council’s social enterprise partners, the Shaw Trust, has provided supported work placements and volunteering opportunities in horticulture and grounds maintenance.
Council hanging baskets and bedding for council flower beds are also provided by Westbank Enterprises, which also operate the business hanging basket scheme that supports local communities in their in bloom efforts.
Councillor Alan Grant, Convener of the Environment Committee, said: “This volunteer workforce often has skills that complement those of our Greenspace Teams that can be harnessed for community benefit.
“By working together we can ensure that our green spaces are looking the best they possibly can.
“Perth and Kinross has an attractive and welcoming environment for residents, visitors and businesses to enjoy, thanks to the hard work and endeavours of the council, communities and Westbank Enterprises.”
