The tragedy we would all suffer from any loss of the gardens would be like the after shock of a bad hurricane. When I take my mother driving, or guests from abroad, we always and I do mean always, go to the gardens to explore. I have on serveral occaisions stopped to say thank you to the gardeners for doing such a wonderful job. When one can't have the garden of their dreams, it is wonderful to have a dream come true. We have so many other places for a hospital annex. I don't see why everything has to be crammed into one place. Imagine the extra staff to employed! Wonderful.
Thanks for this space.
Lin'

The gardens aren't worth saving but human life is. We're not exactly talking about huge internationally acclaimed gardens which are the focus of research and preservation!

Flatten the lot and build the hospital.

The Botanical Gardens is not just any park, it is the headquarters of our park system and is used daily by a broad spectrum of our community.

The new hospital will serve Bermudians of the next 30 years. The parks must be preserved for the Bermudians of the next 100 years and beyond.

I am confident that, given direction, that a superior new hospital can be built on the KEMH existing site, particularly when the old hospital building and the recently purchase Springfield property are taken into account.

@ Sensible Voter:

I don't think anyone who is opposed to building the hospital in the Botanical Gardens is putting open space before human lives.

We all want a new hospital - just not THERE!

'The Botanical Gardens is not just any park, it is the headquarters of our park system and is used daily by a broad spectrum of our community.'

Is an almost laughable comment, it's the haedquarters of a parks department that serves 60,000 people, wow, that's almost as many as a small town in the US.

It's a nice, but unecessary, bit of open space. Let's save the $100m, spend it on housing (which is much more needed) and flatten the park.

@ (not so) sensible Voter:

Here's a little fact for you to ponder...

If this "unnecessary bit of open space" had not existed in 1980 - John Lennon would not have been inspired to write his last album "Double Fantasy" - named after a flower in the gardens... a flower which he claimed inspired him to write music, which boiled up all at once inside of him.

I also strongly encourage you to download Val Wallace's document "The Green Lung of Paget – the Bermuda Botanical Gardens - Why We Must Work Together To Save It"

Sensible Voter, how utterly short sighted of you. Where does it end then? Have you even attempted to entertain other solutions for the hospital? Why does something have to be destroyed in order for something to be built? Some people are hashing out some really good ideas for health care in Bermuda, you may want to take a listen instead of writing off the BG so easily.

@Botanical Guardian

I'm sorry, I stand corrected, you're saying we'd have potentially missed out on a John Lennon song if the gardens weren't in existence. Wow, that's changed my perspective completely, perhaps we should keep the existing gardens and make some more if they produce such valuable results.

@Sean Soares

Money speaks for itself $100m is $100m and at the end of the day a bit of grass and a few trees is just that.

Flatten it and build the hospital.

Sensible Voter .....

Why don't you go back over to your favorite blog site and continue to waste everyone's time over there.
We know all too well what your party line and modus operandi is.

@ A really sensible voter

Ah, so you don't like people disagreeing with you then, I did like your well balanced and 'really sensible reply' especially the pieces of Latin. In response I'd say you were
Argumentum ad hominem and on a lighter note, Mater tua criceta fuit, et pater tuo redoluit bacarum sambucus.

Sensible Voter, Incredibly Sensible Voter, Mr. Hospital and Anti-Tree Hugger are all the same person. I can easily spot this because all of his/her comments are coming from the same IP address.

If you are going to try and pretend to be lots of different people - at least try and figure out how to change your IP address.

I have only one word for this troll

"pathetic"

:-)

This is a great string of emails, I certainly agree with Sensible Voter aka Anti-Tree Hugger.

We don't need the gardens and if buliding a hospital on them will save Bermuda $100m then let's do it.

Botanical Guardian - your replies and arguments are weak.

Let me guess, he changed IP addresses?

Yep! Looks like "Sensible voter" decided to post when s/he got home from the office. The incredibly clever thing was that s/he used a very similar e.mail address (as I have pointed out in the "Open Thread").

I've decided to ban such foolishness and have turned on comment moderation for now.