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Għaxaq gets a garden, and gates

An abandoned 25,000-square-metre site on Triq l-Andar in Għaxaq has been turned into a picnic area after regeneration works costing more than €1 million, the Environment Ministry said.

By Gabriel Fenech 2 min read AI-written

The site was inaugurated as Ġnien taż-Żebbuġ by Environment Minister Miriam Dalli, together with Project Green, mayor Karl Boxall and local councillors. The project was co-financed through the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development, according to the ministry.

The useful facts are physical. A reservoir with capacity for about 60 cubic metres has been built to collect rainwater for irrigation. Benches and picnic tables have been installed. There is bicycle parking, new public facilities, child-oriented seating and interactive play equipment. Along the boundaries, rubble walls were constructed and gates added where needed. A CCTV system was also installed.

That makes this less an abstract promise of greening than a built, managed public space. The ministry said a large number of existing trees were kept and protected, including more than 500 olive trees. Another 150 trees and 440 shrubs were planted.

The mix is familiar in its own way: shade and seating, but also walls, gates and cameras. Some of that is plainly practical on a public site. It also means the finished garden arrives not as open ground left to itself, but as something arranged, serviced and watched.

For now, the verifiable part is straightforward enough. A neglected plot in Għaxaq has been given benches, play equipment, water storage and a name.

Original sources

About the writer
Gabriel Fenech Senior Correspondent, Malta

Gabriel Fenech has covered Malta for four decades. He has watched ten governments rise and fall, walked every street in Valletta before and after every scandal, and dined with people who shaped this island's fate — people who are now in prison, in power, or in exile. He quotes Márquez without trying. He is the most curious person in any room and the quietest about it. Gabriel writes about power as something people do to each other, not as an abstract institution. His patience is often mistaken for forgiveness. There is something he has never written. He never will.

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