Billy the Seal, a Cardiff character who lived in the pond in Victoria Park’s zoo from 1914 until 1939, when he died and it was discovered he was a she…
Somehow I have been so very busy during my four months working from home that I have had trouble keeping up with my blogging. I have also totally abandoned my initial idea of visiting a different Cardiff park every week. Here I am eventually sharing my pictures from Victoria Park, although I took them in late June.
I managed to clock up 5,500 “steps” walking to the park and back, so hopefully that will give you an idea of how close to home it is. For all that, I have only ever visited it twice before, and then only passing through without a camera.
The northern entrance to Victoria Park
The park was built by the city corporation (council) on former marsh land in the Canton area of Cardiff and was officially opened in 1897. It was named Victoria Park in honour of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. I’m sure it is usually very attractive and once it was absolutely glorious, but during the current coronavirus pandemic the efforts of the council parks department are not being wasted on bedding plants.
The flower beds look sad…
… now only wild daisies and shamrock grow here
However, this strange summer cannot affect the many choice trees in Victoria Park. Here are a few of my favourites…
Weeping silver lime (Tilia tomentosa ‘Petiolaris’)…
…and its distinctive white-backed leaves
I was pleased that I recognised this one straight away – the Indian bean tree (Catalpa bignonioides)…
…it has large leaves…
…and here are the dangling ‘beans’
This is a magnificent black walnut (Juglans nigra)…
… which bears a brightly coloured lost kite or maybe a garment…
… and here are the leaves and bark
This is a very different linden from the silver lime but I am unsure of the exact (Tilia) species…
… here are the leaves, flowers and fruits
This is possibly a tamarack (Larix laricina)…
…and here are the needles
I think this is a cedar of Lebanon (Cedrus libani) although without the characteristic layered profile – it looks more like a head of dreadlocks…
…and here are its cones
There was a bandstand at the heart of the park from the start and you can imagine the wonderful musical summer evenings of the early 20th century, but the bandstand fell into disrepair in the 1950s and was removed and replaced by a flower bed. A replica of the original bandstand was installed in 1997 to mark the centenary of the park.
The bandstand today
On my visit there were very few cultivated flowers on show, but this hydrangea was next to the bandstand…
…and this clematis was in bloom on a series of rose arches I assumed were around the bowling green – until I discovered the bowling green was removed in 2015
When Billy the Seal lived here he had a lake to play in, but in recent years this has been replaced by a children’s splash pad for health and safety reasons – this sculpture by David Petersen was placed here in 1997
An ice-cream shack
A coffee shack
This canopy of an Edwardian drinking fountain was restored in the 1980s but the fountain itself has gone…
…a stork design and the words Keep The Pavement Dry…
… the dedication is to Lewin L Samuel from his brothers – the Samuel family were Victorian philanthropists who presented many drinking fountains to the city – the patriarch, Moses, was a watchmaker who came here from Poland
The information board could do with a lick of paint!
And finally…
This is Victoria Park in 1900 – click to see a bigger image
The Squirrelbasket 
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