Kensington Gardens Reserve Redevelopment
In 2019 Burnside secured $3 million in Federal funding, and over $200k from the National Resource Management Board (NRM) for this exciting project that will deliver enormous environmental and recreational benefits to Kensington Gardens Reserve and the surrounding creek ecosystem.
The Council has now secured a further $850k through the State Government’s Open Spaces and Places for People.
City of Burnside CEO, Chris Cowley, said that the grant has allowed Council to broaden the scope of the original project. “At no extra cost to the community, we are adding in a raft of features that will provide much needed unstructured passive and active recreational activities around the park,” Mr Cowley said.
The new features include:
- Installation of a 1.7 km shared walking/running track, providing recreational walking/fitness opportunities for the community at all times.
- Two additional bridges to enable the walking track to be installed (currently no track exists).
- Installation of disability accessible board walk over the wetlands.
- Installation of fitness stations, around the parkrun/walking circuit.
- Expansion of the biodiversity zone, to showcase native indigenous plantings at the reserve, complementing the remnant SA Blue Gum forest currently in-situ.
- Establishment of a Kaurna ‘place of reflection’ in the south-eastern corner of the reserve (possible site of cultural significance and respect).
- Establish a ‘cultural walk’ with interpretive Kaurna signage and
- Installation of Kaurna art to be incorporated with the nature play space, wetland and surrounds.
The original planned revitalisation work in the Reserve includes:
- replacing the unsafe artificial lake with a functional wetland to treat urban water pollution entering Stonyfell Creek.
- visual, recreational and environmental improvements to Stonyfell Creek and the surrounding environment.
- eight reconfigured tournament standard tennis courts with lighting available for club and public use.
- nature play features and biodiversity education elements.
The overall project will include an extensive revegetation program with 30 trees, 230 shrubs and over 6,500 groundcover species to be planted in the area surrounding a new wetland. A dedicated ‘biozone’ area will feature 2,400m2 of plantings across three distinct areas that will complement the remnant SA Blue Gum ecosystem at the reserve. Native species will be used exclusively for all new plantings, and the ‘biozone’ plantings will be locally sourced and indigenous to the reserve and feature an additional 4,800 new plants. The wetland itself will feature almost 15,000 new plants that will visually improve the landscape and benefit the quality of stormwater that enters Stonyfell Creek.
Council is working closely with Kaurna traditional owners to monitor the construction and to develop opportunities for Kaurna heritage recognition such as public art, cultural sites and signage.
Works are scheduled to commence in September 2020 and the tender will be launched within the coming months.
The Kensington Gardens Reserve Redevelopment project is featured in the winter 2020 Focus newsletter being delivered across the City this week. You can also download Focus
