Benidorm makes improvements to the grounds maintenance at 13 schools ahead of the start of the school year

Benidorm City Council, through its Department of Parks and Gardens, has been carrying out maintenance and landscaping improvement works for several days at all 13 schools in the city, to complete the work before the start of the school year in early September. Specifically, the works include clearing flower beds and playgrounds, removing plant debris, trimming and maintaining hedges, pruning palm trees and raising the crowns of existing trees both inside and outside the school grounds, as well as removing branches that could obstruct or interfere with pedestrian traffic. Several wasp nests that had been detected in some palm trees have also been removed to ensure the safety of children.

The work is being carried out by Actúa, the company responsible for the city’s Parks and Gardens service, and will continue throughout August until all the schools have been completed. This means that the work will be finished before school activities resume. Two Parks and Gardens service teams are working across all the schools, with the aim of completing the work before the children return for the new school year.

José Ramón González de Zárate, Councillor for Parks and Gardens, said that this year, as last year, the city had decided to “carry out thorough landscaping and tree maintenance work” so that when pupils return to school, the grounds “are ready and have more shaded areas”. The councillor said that “a great deal of work” is being carried out and explained that, given the large number of trees, “we needed quite a lot of time”, which is why the work began several days ago. González de Zárate added that, once the work is completed, more than 700 trees and over 150 palm trees will have been treated.

González de Zárate said that these works “complement the implementation of inclusive and sustainable schoolyards, which has been carried out with European funding through the Biodiversity Foundation to increase natural shaded areas by renaturalising these spaces”. In this regard, the Councillor for Parks and Gardens highlighted that technicians from the Foundation “were surprised because Benidorm is a city with a large number of trees and natural shade in its schoolyards, where pupils carry out numerous activities”.

“We have been promoting shaded areas in the city for several years by planting trees wherever possible,” the councillor said. He also noted that “the aim is to create natural shaded areas, but when this is not possible, we create them artificially”. “It is now common for us to experience high temperatures, and we are trying to ensure that the city is as well prepared as possible to cope with them. That is why we will continue to promote an increase in natural shaded areas. It has been demonstrated that these measures can reduce the perceived temperature by around four or five degrees,” he concluded.