Really roarsome dino garden springs up in Rochdale town centre

Rochdale town centre Dippy the Dinosaur pop-up garden

A pre-historic dinosaur garden has been created and built in Rochdale town centre as the borough gears up to welcome Dippy the dinosaur in 2020.

Dippy, the Natural History Museum London’s famous Diplodocus cast, has been touring the UK since 2018 and will take pride of place in Number One Riverside next year.

The really wild garden contains specially selected plants and a giant tyrannosaurus rex head, designed by young people from Rochdale Training.

The special garden features a variety of plants including ferns, which have been around for 350m years and predate the dinosaurs, alongside Monkey Puzzle trees, with their distinctive spiky appearance, which date back more than 200m years. Some of the plants included would even have made up part of Dippy’s diet such as conifers, a type of pine tree, which have been around 150m years ago.

The new garden is taking pride of place on Gracie Island in Town Hall Square, and stands in the spot where the World War 1 pop up garden was erected last year to mark the centenary of the conflict. The hugely popular garden, which was awarded best feature in a public place by the Royal Horticultural Society, has since been moved to the Memorial Gardens.

The Dippy garden is a three triangle design, so people can wander around the installation and enjoy browsing the plants.

The feature is part of Rochdale’s entry into North West in Bloom and follows the borough's runaway success in last year’s competition, which saw Rochdale scoop a gold award in the regional heats as well as a gold in its first ever entry into the national Britain in Bloom competition. A judging panel visited the garden on Monday 22 July, as well as a dozen other community and council sites across the borough.

• www.rochdaleonline.co.uk/news-features/2/news-headlines/129327/regional-judging-day-for-rochdale-in-bloom

The Natural History Museum’s famous dinosaur, Dippy, is currently on a UK wide tour and he will be visiting the council’s customer service centre, office and central library, Number One Riverside from 10 February to 28 June 2020. Rochdale will be Dippy’s only stop in the north west of England.

Dippy on Tour: A Natural History Adventure is being brought to Number One Riverside and visitors across the UK by the Natural History Museum in partnership with the Garfield Weston Foundation, and supported by Dell EMC and Williams & Hill.