GLASGOW

KEEP OFF THE GRASS

Walter Gilmour

Richard Stenlake, #7.95

AMID all the dreadful vicissitudes which Glasgow has endured over the years one touchstone, of which much of the world is ignorant, remains: it has more parkland per square mile than any other city in Europe.

Most Glaswegians have taken these lush lungs in the middle of the city's industrial blackness for granted, until, that is, they move elsewhere. Then they know and prize the greenery of Glasgow. Perhaps too, they should know of the sometimes superhuman efforts of the Park People who over the years have argued for and defended and promoted their parks.

One of them is Walter Gilmour who was the boss of horticulture in Glasgow's parks - you might say the E.R.L. Fitzpayne of the Department - for a quarter of a century, retiring early in 1990, and now probably best known as a member of the BBC's Beechgrove Garden team.

It is he who furnishes the foreword and much of the information (he is assisted by Rhona Wilson) throughout this book of Glasgow's municipal verdure. 102 photographs I counted - and still not enough. Produced in the format of other necessary Stenlake books on Glasgow, it benefits by lots of information and the lack of political analysis hardly counts this time around - you don't get political grass after all.

But park-goers have their favourites and most are here. I tend towards the au naturel myself, which is why I like Rouken Glen, Pollok Estate, Queen's Park, so-called because of the Battle of Langside and Mary Queen of Scots, and which my abode overlooks, and the scene of my early childhood, Linn Park. I rather eschew the more formal and more centralised parklands, though Kelvingrove's magnificent Edwardian formality always delights. I love the stookies.

Mind you, Linn once had its formal glories too. It boasted a fabulous Tower de Paris Tearoom which I am afraid I don't remember but somehow do at the same time.

The photograph of it in this book evokes a memory I cannot possibly possess, with a lovely vision of a 1920s tearoom waitress which would have you salivating for the splendours of the days of the General Strike for heaven's sake. But I do remember the huge wooden shelters where we had our Sunday School picnics when it rained, that is, every year.

I also remember the ornate ironwork bandstand in Bellahouston Park, replaced of course by a dry ski slope no longer used. (Incidentally, when is somebody going to do something about the Palace of Art, the only remaining fixture in Bellahouston from the amazing 1938 Empire Exhibition? To our shame, we did the same to Glasgow's 1989 Garden Festival site.)

The parks have changed and though Walter Gilmour does not regret the passing of the neo-fascist Parkies and I do, the greatest changes of all are the under-use of them, and of course the vandalism.

The fact is that many people, especially women and children, are now warned off going through the larger and more isolated parks and one can hardly blame them.

Yet the parks are still there to be enjoyed, and still for free. For how long, one may well wonder.