Far better uses for garden show money

AS an unemployed horticulturist, trained in Cork and living in Cork, I would like to complain about the €2.5m wasted by Cork Corporation on the garden designed by Diarmuid Gavin.

The garden that in both conception (based on Avatar), design, and its eventual installation at the Mardyke has no meaningful connection to the city or the people living in the city.

It is another example of pandering to a celebrity culture that is instant, ephemeral and will not improve the lives of Cork people in any sustained way.

Gavin himself has no connection to Cork city, For this amount of money you could have employed, for at least five years, an experienced local person to totally rethink the public areas, green up the city, operate co-ordinated school garden programmes and create a city wide allotment programme and so on.

Among other things it could have created real employment for council workers. This would have impacted on the lives of real Cork people.

I am not the only person with this opinion as we all struggle to make ends meet in a hard hit industry.

Sue Wainwright

Mahon

Cork