Creating a Space for Community, Nature and Play at Hawaiian’s Newpark
Great landscapes can do more than look good. They can create places for people to connect, encourage children to engage with nature and demonstrate how thoughtful landscape design can respond to the environment around it.
StrataGreen was proud to recently support The Forever Project with the supply of Formline Landscape Edging and RhinoWeld Gabions for the new Hawaiian’s Newpark Community Corner in Girrawheen.
The newly completed outdoor precinct was created as a free community space where local families, children and visitors can gather, play and spend time outdoors. Shaped by feedback from the local community, it brings together a public basketball court, nature play and landscaped areas designed for people to relax and connect.
Bringing Children Back to Nature
At the heart of the project is an immersive Firewise Nature Play Garden, providing children with opportunities to interact with the landscape through a slide, water play, sandpit and other nature-based elements.
Rather than separating play from the surrounding landscape, the garden creates an environment where planting, natural materials and play become part of the same experience.
The result is a space that encourages children to get outside, explore and reconnect with nature while providing somewhere the wider community can spend time together.
Designed to be Firewise
An important part of the garden is its Firewise approach.
A Firewise garden considers plant selection and landscape layout to help reduce bushfire risk while still creating an attractive, green and usable space. At Newpark, these principles have been incorporated into a garden specifically designed for community use.
The landscape has also been designed with Waterwise and low-maintenance principles in mind, helping create a practical garden that can be more easily managed by the facility team over the long term.
It’s a great example of how public landscapes can balance aesthetics and community use with practical considerations around water, maintenance and resilience.
Formline and RhinoWeld in the Landscape
We were pleased to supply Formline Landscape Edging and RhinoWeld Welded Gabions to The Forever Project for incorporation throughout the project.
Formline helps create clean definition between the garden's different landscaped areas, providing the strong, refined lines needed to bring structure to the planting and surrounding spaces.
RhinoWeld demonstrates another side of landscape design altogether. Gabions can become functional landscape features rather than simply being used for retaining applications.
One of our favourite applications at Newpark is the feature bench seating beside the basketball court, where RhinoWeld has been incorporated into the landscape to create a place for parents, friends and visitors to sit and watch the action.
It demonstrates exactly why we love seeing these products specified in creative projects — the materials become part of how people actually experience and use the space.
About The Forever Project
The Forever Project is dedicated to sustainability education and creating resilient, environmentally responsible landscapes, working with communities, organisations and industry to demonstrate practical approaches to better gardens and outdoor spaces.
Through projects such as Hawaiian’s Newpark Community Corner, The Forever Project brings these principles to life — creating spaces that encourage people to reconnect with nature while incorporating Firewise, Waterwise and low-maintenance design principles.
StrataGreen is proud to support The Forever Project with products such as Formline and RhinoWeld, reflecting our shared commitment to creating more sustainable, resilient and engaging landscapes across Western Australia.
You can learn more about The Forever Project and their ongoing initiatives in the link below.
A Space Created for the Community
Hawaiian’s Newpark Community Corner officially opened on 3 September, welcoming more than 300 members of the local community despite wet weather. Families were able to experience the basketball court and Firewise Garden for the first time, bringing the vision behind the project to life.
We're proud to have supported The Forever Project with products for a project that brings together landscape design, nature play and community connection.
Projects like this demonstrate what can be achieved when landscapes are designed not only around how they look, but around how people will use them, how they'll be maintained and how they'll perform into the future.
A fantastic result for everyone involved, and one we're proud to have played a small part in.
