BIRKENHEAD PARK celebrates its 150th birthday on Saturday, April 5, with a gala day and donkey derby to rival the Grand National!

Rides, an old fashioned fair, jugglers and a silver band will welcome the public through the Grand entrance between 11am and tea-time. Admission is free.

The first municipal park in the country, Birkenhead inspired the design of New York Central Park and still attracts up to 450,000 people a year.

On Saturday night, Merseyside joins in the party by watching a firework display on the River Mersey at 8.30pm, best viewed from Woodside Ferry.

The party is being hosted by Wirral Council's park rangers with celebrations continuing throughout the Summer, including a family treasure hunt on May 4, countryside fayre on May 26 and a teddy bear's picnic in August.

Birkenhead Park opened on April 5, 1847, when Birkenhead was a growing town. It was designed by Joseph Paxton and today remains a green gem in the town centre, listed as a Grade 1 landscape in the Register of Parks and Gardens of Historic Interest.

The park has seven lodges, each in a different architectiral style. One of the people who visited Birkenhead Park in the early days of 1850 was one F. L. Olmsted, an American.

He was impressed and wrote home: "I am ready to admit in democratic America there is nothing as comparable with this people's garden." Olmsted later became famous as designer of Central Park, New York, which incorporated many designs to be found in Birkenhead Park even to this day.

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