Renowned flowerbeds 'look like cat litter trays'

Businesses in an East Sussex town known for its vibrant flower beds say they are "disgusted" with the council for turning them into a "cat litter tray".

Crowds often flock to the Carpet Gardens on Eastbourne seafront to view the tens of thousands of dazzling flowers planted there.

However, Eastbourne Borough Council said it was "moving with the times" and had chosen plants to help reduce its carbon footprint this year.

But with the Eastbourne Open tennis tournament beginning on Saturday, some businesses claim the incoming tourists will be bitterly disappointed.

Katerina Tutt, owner of Qualisea Fish Restaurant in the town, said: "I'm upset and we're disgusted at the state of it.

"Eastbourne's renowned for the Carpet Gardens, and the bright colours always attract lots of people, but it just looks absolutely terrible this year.

"It's been one of the most iconic things on the front from the seventies. I don't think anyone can understand what they're playing at. No one's impressed on any level."

Aleksandra Gatta, owner of Gianni's restaurant, said the redesign had caused confusion among her customers.

"They keep asking us what's going on," she said. "As far as we know it's sustainable gardens, but no one is really saying anything very good about it.

"It looks really poor at the minute."

Jim Murray, sustainability lead on Eastbourne Borough Council, promised that the vibrancy of the gardens would return.

He told BBC Radio Sussex: "It's different, we're trying to plant perennial plants which will at some point of the year be green, but they will also spring into flowers and arrays of colour throughout the year."

He accepted that the flowers of previous years looked "amazing", but said their biodiversity was "fairly limited".

"We were importing plants from the Netherlands two or three times a year, which gave us a huge carbon footprint. We planted them, then waited for them to die," he added.

"The transformation of the Carpet Gardens is one of the largest projects we've done on the seafront in the last few years, and we're doing it to reduce the carbon footprint of the gardens themselves."

Before the redesign, the flowerbeds had to be replanted twice a year, which the council said was costly and wasteful.

Mr Murray confirmed that the new flower beds will be complete in time for the tennis this weekend.

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