Fgura’s First Real Lung: Project Green Breaks Ground on Game-Changing Town Park

Project Green begins work on new park in Fgura
By Hot Malta Staff

Fgura’s skyline of honey-coloured blocks and parish-dome glitter is about to get its first real lung. On Monday morning, bulldozers painted in the fresh mint livery of Project Green rolled onto a 4,500-square-metre wedge of disused government land just off Triq il-Fgura c/w Triq Tal-Liedna, signalling the start of a €2.3 million neighbourhood park that promises to flip the script on Malta’s most densely populated town.

For decades, Fgura has worn its density like a badge—post-war townhouses rubbing shoulders with 1970s rabbit-warren flats, roadside vendors selling pastizzi to shift workers, and feast enthusiasts who still manage to squeeze a 40-piece brass band into every corner. Yet green space has remained the missing note in the town’s boisterous chord. With 8,700 residents per square kilometre—double the national average—local children have grown up playing football between parked cars, while pensioners shuffle to the village core for a breath of shade.

Enter Project Green, the government agency tasked with weaving pockets of nature back into the urban fabric. CEO Steve Ellul stood in the rubble-strewn lot on Monday and declared: “Fgura is not getting a lawn with a bench. We’re planting 120 native trees—carob, lentisk, wild olive—installing a 500 m² kids’ discovery garden, a 1 km perimeter track, and a 200-seat amphitheatre that can double as an open-air cinema during the feast week.” The design, drawn up by local firm AP Valletta, takes cues from the stepped terraces of nearby Cottonera gardens, using traditional rubble walls to create natural seating niches that echo the town’s limestone DNA.

Mayor Pierre D. Borg could barely contain his glee. “This was a dumping ground for builders’ rubble and the occasional stolen car,” he admitted, gesturing to the last pile of crushed concrete. “Today we start healing a scar that has ached since the 1980s.” Borg revealed that the council has already secured EU LEADER funds for a weekly farmers’ market inside the park, aiming to give Fgura’s backyard growers—famous for their tangy ġbejniet and winter-grown broccolo—a visible stage.

Cultural footprint, not just carbon
The park’s cultural programming is where things get deliciously Fguran. The amphitheatre will host the town’s first-ever open-air Mnarja concert on 29 June, reviving the summer solstice tradition of folk guitar and rabbit stew in a setting that nods to Buskett without the bus ride. Local band club Għaqda Melita plans to stage acoustic sets during the September feast of Our Lady of Carmel, swapping brass decibels for strings under the trees. “We want the younger generation to associate feast week not only with fireworks but with the scent of lentisk and grilled fenkata,” said band club president Marisa Zahra.

Community impact—by the numbers
Project Green estimates the park will absorb 18 tonnes of CO₂ annually, but the real metric residents care about is shade. Once the canopy matures, surface temperatures are projected to drop by up to 4 °C in a 200-metre radius, bringing relief to adjacent blocks that currently bake in south-facing heat. A survey conducted by the University of Malta’s Institute for Climate & Sustainable Development found that 72 % of Fgura households have no balcony planting; the new discovery garden will offer 40 rental allotments where families can grow herbs and tomatoes, effectively exporting the balcony onto public land.

Traffic calming comes baked into the plan. Triq il-Fgura will be narrowed to a single lane at the park entrance, forcing rat-running trucks back onto the arterial road and gifting pedestrians a 3-metre-wide al fresco walkway. Local architect and cycling activist Sasha Vella praised the move: “For the first time, a nine-year-old will be able to scooter from the parish church to the playground without dodging a concrete mixer.”

Not everyone is clapping. Some residents fear the park will become a magnet for late-night noise. Mayor Borg counters that gates will close at 23:00, with CCTV linked to the community police station 300 metres away. Others grumble about losing “convenient” on-street parking—roughly 42 spaces will be sacrificed. Project Green retorts that the surrounding roads still harbour 600 legal spots, and a new cycle rack for 50 bikes should nudge commuters onto two wheels.

Feast-day test
The true test will come next June, when the park hosts its first village festa mass meeting. If the carob saplings survive the pyro-spectacular and the amphitheatre stones still smell of rabbit wine, Fgura will know that its new green heart has truly merged with its red-blooded soul.

Conclusion
From Monday’s clank of the first digger to the promised scent of carob in bloom, Project Green’s Fgura park is more than a landscaping contract—it is a cultural correction, a climate intervention, and a community wager that Malta’s densest town can breathe without losing its voice. When the gates open next spring, every Fguran—from the lace-curtain nonna to the Fortnite teen—will finally have a patch of shared shade that belongs to them, no developer’s crane in sight. In a country where every square metre is fought over, that might be the most radical plot twist of all.