Felt canaries and banners adorned trees and an aviary after protestors ‘yarn bombed’ a park this morning.

A peaceful demonstration was held in Pinner Memorial Park in support of its former park keeper Tracy, who was recently made redundant from her full time role at the park.

She has now joined a wider team that will look after parks around the borough, although the service will be provided less frequently.

Protestors wrapped up trees and the canary aviary at the park with homemade felt bunting, adorned with colourful canaries and banners saying ‘save our park’ and ‘bring back Tracy’.

The gueruilla knitters, who visited the park at 8am this morning, were organised by HA:WI Women's Institute president Niamh McEnery.

She said: "A couple of us came together to stitch this little canary birds one evening because we felt we needed to have our say as we were quite upset about the cuts to our park.

"We did it to raise a smile and make people look and see what we are talking about. We just wanted it to be a non-aggressive protest against these cuts to our park service, that we think will have a huge knock on effect.

"There was a big online petition with almost 2,000 signatures to try and save our park, but the council seem to have ignored that.

"Without Tracy, the grass won't be cut, the bins won't be emptied and the litter cleared - we need a park keeper."

The yarn bombing – a new form of graffiti art that uses wool or material instead of paint or chalk – comes after complaints that the park has been neglected since the park keeper left, leaving one of the birds to die as a result.

Simon Kisner said: “Even today the park is now starting to look messy. This park is used by families with young children as well as the wider community of Pinner.

“There have been reports in the last week of cigarette butts being left in the children's playground, something that Tracy would have taken care of as a matter of course.

“Now there's no one to do this as regularly this will lead to inevitable decline of this much loved park.”

A petition to ‘Save Pinner Park’ has more than 1,700 signatures, and can be signed here: https://www.change.org/p/harrow-council-save-pinner-park

A spokesperson from Harrow Council said: "“All park keepers employed directly by the council have now joined mobile crews to work across different sites in the borough.

"£83 million of cuts have been imposed on the council and this is one of a number of ways for which the council must make savings of over the next four years.

"Our parks will continue to receive maintenance in line with our service standards.”