Birkenhead Park is 175 years old in 2022 and was the inspiration for the design of Central Park in New York.

Birkenhead Park in the centre of Birkenhead, Wirral, was designed by Joseph Paxton and opened on 5 April 1847. It is generally acknowledged as the first publicly funded civic park in the world.

New York's Central Park is an urban park in New York City. It is the most visited urban park in the United States, with an estimated 42 million visitors annually, and is the most filmed location in the world.

The design of Central Park in New York was laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted who was inspired by his 1850 visit to Birkenhead Park, meaning that links between the two urban parks have been there since the beginning.

Both Birkenhead and New York roads are laid out on a 19th-century grid system, but where Paxton and the Birkenhead Commissioners chose to break the grid system with their urban park, Olmsted chose to keep the layout of Central Park within the confines of the grid system.

The idea of "twinning" the parks will not only officially commemorate the inseparable links, striking similarities, and shared vision between the two parks, and the 175th anniversary of Birkenhead Park but will also build links between the two districts that "came of age" at the same time during the 19th century.

This petition was organised by www.birkenhead.news

Image credit: Birkenhead Park - David Humphreys, Central Park - Alonso Javier Torres.