Wadanggari Park in St Leonards is an innovative park created for Lane Cove Council, the first of its kind to be built over a railway line in Australia. It has been built by Arenco, with landscape architecture by Arcadia Landscape Architecture. Our team completed the landscape construction works, with our community infrastructure division Solutions + Co completing the build of the play structures.
The park has been constructed above the North Shore railway line, and provides some much-needed open space for the growing residential and commercial communities nearby. The 4,750 square metre space seamlessly connects these communities with the retail precinct Mall 88, hospitality venues and the train station underpass below.
The stunning play space was designed to represent the life stages of the Banksia, an iconic native flower integral to Lane Cove ecological communities.
Built across two levels, the play space includes infant pods, bridges, climbing nets, viewing decks, and slides. The term Wadanggari also means ‘Banksia’ in Sydney Indigenous language, specifically the local Cammeraygal language group.
As well as the playground, we delivered the open space section of the park for development company JQZ. This portion consisted of the construction of rolling green lawns, garden beds bordered by sandstone retaining walls that also doubled as seating, and densely planted ground covers, shrubs and trees. We also installed precast benches and irrigation throughout.
In an urban environment like St Leonards which has a growing community where apartments are the predominant style of living, a park such as this is a necessity – for the local community and their wellbeing, and to reduce the urban heat island effect.
