Garrong Park, Tinning Street

A new park remedying a neighbourhood where residents didn’t have public green space within walking distance.

On our Tinning Street site, this required an ageing 1800m2 warehouse to be purchased and replaced with public open space. To prevent destabilising adjacent warehouses during demolition, our friends at Dickson Architecture designed an industrial steel support structure. The structure bridges the park with the adjacent building and forms shelters and trellises, with a vision of summer BBQs under the vines. Relics of the demolished warehouse remain in the park including segments of the original concrete, honed to expose the chunky bluestone aggregate.

The design includes an ambitious rain garden scheme for water retention, a playground, a network of access paths, diverse planting and wicking beds for informal community veggie growing. The park went through a naming process to become ‘Garrong Park’, named after the wattles that used to grow on this Country and now feature in the planting scheme. This park was the first park built in Merri-bek’s ambitious ‘Parks Close 2 Home (PC2H)’ scheme.