Royal Park Nature Playground

Project

The much loved Nature Play at Royal Park was developed as a partnership project between City of Melbourne and the Victorian Department of Health & Human Services.

Situated on what was once the Royal Children’s Hospital site, Nature Play was designed to give inner city children plenty of opportunity for unpredictable play amongst nature.

Design

Community engagement was central to the success of the project. Permission from the traditional owners, the Wurundjeri, enabled City Design Studio to incorporate a theme around the seven seasons into the park layout.

Equipment

The park features a number of graduated challenges, ensuring there are fun activities for children of all ages and abilities.

Urbania delivered an array of impressive timber structures and equipment for the park, including a large wheelchair accessible custom timber bridge.

Our play partners Richter Spielgeräte provided a large climbing forest with Hercules rope nets. This equipment offers children different levels of challenge at different heights, and the rope sections encourage problem-solving for young minds.

A large Richter climbing structure provides plenty of play value. Handmade from irregular timber logs, it offers a sensual experience for young hands and a climbing challenge for older, less risk-averse kids.

Both the climbing structure and climbing forest can handle multiple children at a time, and are always hugely popular.

The park also has an assortment of stainless steel slides, as well as a fun water play area that includes water trays, lock gates and water pumps, where youngsters get together to pump and dam water.