20/05/2026
As a Community Council, we have been receiving feedback from residents complaining about the state of the flower beds on the roundabout and the apparent lack of maintenance on them, as have the three ward councillors.
There have been complaints about the tall perennial plants & flowers on the island blocking driver’s vision and also the clear lack of weeding and maintenance for some time (a lack of mulching and an overgrowth of dandelions & weeds).
As a result of these complaints, we contacted the Castle Douglas Development Forum (CDDF) to pass that feedback on, as the flower beds have been their responsibility for a few years now (as was their wish).
The response we received from them stated that they had already had a meeting and decided that it was their board's view that they would now like the maintenance of civic planning areas such as the roundabout to be passed back to the Community Council. This was not a request as it was delivered to us as a decision already made by them, on our behalf, which strictly is not in their gift.
As many of you will be aware, the Community Council is a voluntary organisation, set up by statute by the local authority and run by local residents to act on behalf of the community, and to best represent and support the area. Our members are all volunteers, many who have full time jobs alongside their council commitments. Both the co-opted joint chairs of the CDDF attended our last community council meeting held in April, where the matter of the flower beds was discussed. At at that meeting no objections as to the best and most practical route forward were raised or offered.
For absolute clarity, the suggestion of grassing over the islands on the roundabout, largely for practical reasons, was made to various local community groups by D&G Council. This was not a request that was made by us to D&G Council, as falsely stated in a social media post by the Castle Douglas Development Forum yesterday.
As a community council, we have not yet formally accepted responsibility for the area, but we are determined that the entrance to Castle Douglas should be something that we can all be proud of and one that can be maintained and managed with the limited resources available to us during these more challenging times. Therefore, we are currently in the process of trying to formalise plans for moving forward, in the best interests of the town.
We are currently looking at new, innovative and more practical options, including smart branded planters for the islands and/or underneath the town signs, benches with planters attached, new bedding plants and renewing the Saltire.
We are still at the planning stage as this has all happened very recently and we have the full support of our locally elected members to try and find a suitable and sustainable way forward for the roundabout, given our limited funds and resources.
As always, we will endeavour to do our best for the community, and to try to make it an area that Castle Douglas can be proud of once again, as it always was many years ago.
**********
*roundabout photo credit to . All other photos are examples of some of the styles of planters being considered, to tie in with the black & gold town directional signs, beautifully restored by the Castle Douglas Men's Shed.
