Central Gardens

Heritage space theme

Following a playground audit of the Central Gardens playspace, it was identified the current playground no longer met current playground standards and was due for an upgrade.

The City of Boroondara conducted community consultation, and the results clearly showed maintaining the rocket or space theme in the playground was favoured. The rocketship had been part of the play space since 1960 and is an icon in the neighbourhood.

While the large rocket was refurbished, many new pieces of play equipment were included in the space. The City of Boroondara and ACLA Consultants engaged adventure+ to develop some of these pieces.

In keeping with the space theme, adventure+ worked with the Landscape architect to create a combination unit that included mission control interactive panels, a circular roof with a constellation pattern, a scramble net and monkey bars, as well as a gyro swing and slides.

From sketch to reality

adventure+ took the idea of the landscape architect, which was a simple sketch, and turned it into a practical result. The idea provided the foundation of the playground design, and the adventure+ team were able to reflect this idea in a way that was economical, standards compliant and required minimal design and installation time.

Maximizing engagement & challenge

It is critical to think about engagement when designing a community playground. That’s why in this playground, a diverse range of play components of varying challenges was included. While smaller and lower-level components for juniors at located at the bottom level of the playground, the upper level has more challenging bridges and overhead activities for older children.

Our community indicated a strong desire for the existing rocket play piece to be retained. We listened to our community and worked hard to renew the lifespan of the original 1960s rocket by taking it through a comprehensive restoration process.

City of Boroondara