Of flower beds, and park benches, ......Piccadilly Gardens in the 1950s and 60s

Now many of us have fond memories of Piccadilly Gardens.

And this postcard marketed in the 1950s by Tuck & Sons Ltd goes a long way to show why it remains close to many Mancunians.

In the spring and summer the sunken gardens were a blaze of colour and a perfect place for a lunch break or a pause from shopping.

Moreover if you had missed the bus there was no better place to sit.

All of which might begin to stray into silly nostalgic tosh, but I think not.

The gardens back then had a human scale to them and were far better suited to an urban landscape than the windswept place of today with its patches of threadbare grass and brutal concrete slab of a wall.

I am well aware that the planners may have thought that a concrete barrier was a sensible way of blocking the tram and bus traffic but it does not work and has led to that silly idea of painting it green or covering it with creepers.

Neither of which will really solve the blunder.

But enough of this rant.

The gardens had become a run down and shabby place but as the plethora of old pictures goes to show it was somewhere worth saving.

Picture; Piccadilly Gardens, from the series Manchester, Lillywhite, issued by Tuck & Sons, courtesy of TuckDB http://tuckdb.org/history