Castlemaine Botanical Gardens playground wins major award!

The stunning new playground at Castlemaine Botanical Gardens has won the top award in Kidsafe’s 2012 National Playspace Design Awards.

Mount Alexander Shire CEO, Phil Rowland, announced the win to strong applause at last week’s council meeting in Baringhup.

The playground was built as part of the council’s $2.2 million revamp of the gardens last year. The funding was provided by the Federal Government.

Mr Rowland said the Castlemaine Botanical Gardens Playspace, which was designed by Urban Initiatives Pty Ltd, won the best Public Playspace $500,000-$1 million category of the Kidsafe awards, which recognise excellence and innovation in providing safe, creative playspaces for children across Australia.

Mr Rowland said the award was wonderful recognition for the shire.

“In terms of Mount Alexander, it’s just a really nice example of what you can do in a heritage environment and with a young community,” Mr Rowland said. “What better way to recognise and celebrate that than with a refreshed playspace in the Castlemaine Botanical Gardens and now it’s an award-winning playspace. It’s fantastic.”

Mr Rowland paid tribute to former council officer Gary Lawrence, who managed the project internally and put the application together to get the $2.2 million Federal Government grant.

The Kidsafe judges raved about the project.

“This space has an aura of a mythical place back in time and the beautiful sculptural elements adds to strong imaginative play experiences,”the judges said. “The use of recycled logs has been carefully considered and executed perfectly.

“This gorgeous setting – the Castlemaine Botanical Gardens – deserved this most beautiful playspace.”

Mr Rowland also told the Mail that the rotunda at the gardens, which was destroyed by vandals over a year ago, would be replaced soon.

“It shouldn’t be far away from commencing – it’s not an enormous project to build it but Heritage Victoria has got pretty strict processes to go through and it is the ultimate approval body for it. We are just waiting on the final sign off.”

He said the rotunda would cost somewhere in the vicinity of $80,000 to replace and that would be funded through insurance.

“Once it is signed off by Heritage Victoria, we will get some quotes and get it built.”