Fleming’s Landscape: A rock-steady park crowns the town in Warragul
Australia’s pre-eminent horticulture and landscape construction company, the Fleming’s Group, provides end-to-end services for any outdoor environment – With four production plant nurseries, a landscape design studio, a full-service commercial landscape construction company, Fleming’s can cover it all!
So, when the Jana Group contacted Fleming’s owners, Paige and Wes Fleming to design and build not one, but two legacy parks in the rolling green hills of Warragul, they brought all their teams along to create something very special.
Initial site inspections of the Crownlea, highlighted gorgeous fertile hills, and sweeping vistas across the Warragul countryside providing ample scope for the imagination.
The site would include two large parks located on prime land which the developer cleverly retained for the use of the community, rather than selling off at a huge premium for a private home.
The Fleming’s worked closely with their landscape architects at FLOW Design Studio to harness the sites natural topography and vistas weaving designs for the parks that would act as a marriage and provide a real experience for visitors.
For the first and smaller of the two parks FLOW designed an impressive, inverted rock fortress, a wide range of natural play elements, a very cool cubby and playhouse, swings, slides, climbing elements and even a bespoke hand-carved kitchenette as well as a sensory garden.
Huge flat boulders were carefully placed to naturally harness water and carry it down natural dry -creek beds and under bespoke built recycled timber bridges, making for a uniquely engaging play-space.
The second and main park is perched high and overlooks the first park. Tiers of rock pools cascade across three tiers of play spaces which include waterplay elements, swings, slides, totem poles and a bespoke designed shelter perfect for family and friends to gather.
A half basketball court tops off the area which is framed again by the large boulders – ideal for sitting on while watching kids throw a few hoops.
The fertile soil of the site ensured the parks are filled with magnificent, mature trees. Large maples provide vibrant autumn foliage while mature natives offer evergreen throughout the year, while avenues of flowering trees will herald the coming of spring and invite the birds and bees to enjoy the open space as much as any human.
Trees also feature as natural pergolas in the first park with advanced ornamentals pleached into umbrellas to ensure natural shade over the picnic tables in summer.
The site is anything but usual and already thousands of visitors have discovered the joy of the parks which have been constructed and open to the public long before a resident could reside there providing true assets for the community.
“We have designed and built a lot of parks, and all of them we are proud of, however this project was an exception from the outset. Jana gave us free reign, trusting our instincts and our suggestions implicitly. We had the support of the council every step of the way and we had a team of dedicated landscape architects, and expert landscapers that all went above and beyond,” – Paige Fleming.
03 9756 6105
[email protected]
flemings.com.au
