Yesterday about 17 volunteers, mostly from the Lions Club of Queenstown, upped tools at 8am and worked all day to spruce up the hospital’s grounds.
Long-time club member Peter Doyle says he happened to be speaking to a nurse recently when conversation turned to the "awful" state of the property’s exterior.
Opened in 1989, till recently the southern wing of the building’s been occupied by the Lake Wakatipu Care Centre — it’s latterly been run by Arvida. In September, residents were moved into new Queenstown Country Club suites, and ever since the grounds have been neglected.
LDH’s admin team leader Maria Wilson, of Cromwell, who’s been mowing lawns on her lunch breaks, and Queenstown nurse Pam Shaw got their heads together and spoke to the Lions, to see if they’d be willing to dig in for a day and help spruce up the grounds.
"The grounds have just become overgrown ... and I’m proud of where I work and I wanted it to be tidy," Wilson says. "It’s a crying shame, it’s a beautiful garden, so why let it go to wrack and ruin?"
The Lions heeded the call to action and spent yesterday pruning, weeding, mowing, digging, and giving trees haircuts — as a thank you, hospital staff organised a barbecue lunch, with sausages donated by Neat Meat.
Shaw says she’s also spoken to Queenstown’s Rotaract, an offshoot of Rotary, who’ll come in next year to maintain the grounds, hopefully regularly.
