A GROUP of volunteers have been left upset after one of Poole's oldest gardens was vandalised. 

Coy Pond Gardens come under Grade II list by English Heritage.

A group called Friends of Coy Pond has been working towards the maintenance and conservation of Coy Pond gardens.

The group comprises the residents of 191 households in the vicinity of Coy Pond and the gardens. They work together with the Borough of Poole, to enhance the area.

The friends have created several individual garden areas, five of them with a notice board proclaiming their names, with a related cartoon.

Last week, one of the volunteers saw, the boards have been uprooted from their cement base and left lying around.

A witness claimed they saw a group of children running away from the scene. 

David Reeves, 81, is a gardener and have been involved as a volunteer with Friends of Coy Pond for eight years.

He is the one who had created boards and firmly cemented them in. He purchased 40 kg of fence post concrete, and zinc nails then spent a long morning, fixing all of them.

(Image: The boards at Coy Ponds, Bournemouth, Credit: David Reeves)

David said: “I got a call from one of the volunteers who lives nearby about this. He told me about what happened.

"Then, I went to buy special concrete cement which sets very quickly. I spent over five hours and putting the boards back in the same place." 

(Image: Coy Pond Gardens, Bournemouth, Credit: David Reeves)

(Image: David Reeves at Coy Pond Gardens, Bournemouth, Credit: David Reeves)

David said: “For me, gardening in Coy Pond is like a green therapy. As a volunteers, we must spend like 1200 hours. They spend a couple of hours. I spent generally quite a bit more.”

The Friends group is contributing both time and money toward the improvements at Coy Pond Gardens and they are one of the oldest Friends groups in Poole having been formed in 1998.

In 2021, they were also awarded ‘Outstanding’ by the Royal Horticultural Society’s (RHS) Britain in Bloom.

The Friends of Coy Pond has done different projects maintaining the pond, gardens and rockery.

At more than 550 feet long, the rockery is the longest on the south coast, and over a period of three years it has been cleared and re-planted.

The plants in the garden have been donated by members of the public, reinforcing the community nature of this open space.