A Conversation with the Landscape Architect Behind Kings Park’s Newest Garden
At Kings Park, a garden is never only a collection of plants. It is also a meeting place, a scientific resource, a cultural landscape and a carefully framed view into Perth’s wider ecology. The newest garden within the precinct continues that tradition by asking how a contemporary public landscape can feel both distinctly Western Australian and genuinely useful to the people who visit it.
The project sits within the living museum of Kings Park and Botanic Garden, where horticultural displays share ground with remnant bushland, memorials, walking trails and sweeping views across the Swan River. Its landscape architect approached the work with an understanding that any new intervention would need to respect an already powerful sense of place.
In conversation, the designer describes a process shaped by climate, Country, horticultural knowledge and everyday use. The result is a garden that encourages visitors to slow down, observe seasonal change and see local plant communities as an essential part of urban life.
Designing Within A Living Collection
The first challenge was context. Kings Park is already familiar to generations of Western Australians, and its botanic garden contains an extraordinary range of native species. A new garden could easily become visually loud or feel detached from the broader landscape. Instead, the design works through a quieter relationship between display and setting.
Planting beds are treated as connected ecological rooms rather than isolated ornamental compositions. Changes in height, texture and density create movement through the site, while paths offer different speeds of experience. Visitors can read the garden from a distance, enter its planted spaces or pause at the edges where cultivated beds meet the larger landscape.
The landscape architect explains that this layered structure was important because public gardens are used in many ways. Some visitors arrive for a short walk, others come to study plants, take photographs, meet friends or bring children. A successful garden needs to accommodate those overlapping patterns without losing its sense of clarity.
A Garden Shaped By Perth’s Climate
Water was central to the design from the beginning. Perth’s long, dry summers demand a different approach from gardens based on constant irrigation and lush visual abundance. The planting palette therefore prioritises species that can withstand heat, seasonal dryness and exposed conditions while still producing variation throughout the year.
This does not mean creating a sparse or austere landscape. Australian plants offer an expansive range of colour, form and habitat value, from sculptural grass trees and layered shrubs to delicate flowers and finely textured groundcovers. The design uses these qualities to build atmosphere without relying on plants that are poorly suited to the Swan Coastal Plain.
Soil preparation, drainage and maintenance were considered as carefully as the visible planting. In a public garden, long-term performance depends on decisions that visitors may never see: how water moves through the site, how roots are given room to establish and how planting can be renewed without disrupting the character of the whole composition.
Country, Culture And Responsibility
Kings Park occupies Whadjuk Noongar Country, and its meaning cannot be separated from the cultural knowledge embedded in the land. The project’s approach recognises that planting a garden in this setting involves more than selecting species associated with Western Australia. It requires attention to relationships between plants, people, seasons and place.
The landscape architect speaks of the garden as an opportunity to make those relationships more legible. Seasonal change becomes a form of interpretation, with flowering, fruiting, colour and habitat activity offering visitors ways to notice the rhythms of the local environment. This approach avoids reducing culture to a graphic motif or a token planting list.
Interpretation can support that experience, yet the landscape itself does much of the communication. A path through layered vegetation, the sound of insects in flowering shrubs or the scent released by foliage on a warm day can create a stronger connection than a sign read in isolation. The garden is designed to invite attention before it asks for explanation.
How The New Garden Works
The project balances several roles that are often separated in public landscape design. It is a horticultural display, an outdoor classroom, a habitat for insects and birds, and a place for informal recreation. The following elements show how those functions overlap.
| Design element | Visitor experience | Broader purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Climate-responsive planting | Colour, texture and seasonal change | Demonstrates resilient local horticulture |
| Layered vegetation | Enclosure, discovery and framed views | Provides habitat and protects soil |
| Accessible circulation | Clear movement through the garden | Supports visitors with different abilities |
| Resting points | Pause, observation and social use | Extends the time people spend in the landscape |
| Interpretive moments | Connections between plants and place | Encourages ecological and cultural learning |
| Flexible open areas | Informal gathering and events | Keeps the garden active beyond peak flowering |
The landscape architect describes circulation as a form of storytelling. Rather than revealing everything at once, the route allows visitors to move between open outlooks and more intimate planted spaces. This sequence creates a sense of progression without turning the garden into a rigidly directed experience.
Accessibility was considered as part of the garden’s identity rather than as a technical addition. Comfortable gradients, legible paths and places to rest make the landscape more welcoming for older visitors, families and people who may spend longer moving through the site. These decisions also benefit anyone seeking a slower, more contemplative experience.
Planting For Time And Change
A newly completed garden can look resolved on opening day, but landscape architects work with a longer horizon. Plants need time to establish, canopy relationships evolve and the balance between species becomes clearer over successive seasons. The designer sees this change as part of the project rather than a sign that the work is unfinished.
The planting strategy allows for growth and adjustment. Some species provide an immediate framework, while others fill in gradually or appear at particular times of year. This creates a garden that cannot be understood through a single visit. Returning visitors may notice a new flowering layer, a different quality of shade or the arrival of wildlife that was less visible during establishment.
Maintenance is therefore an act of design. Pruning, weed control, irrigation management and replacement planting all influence the garden’s character. The project team has considered how horticultural staff can care for the landscape without forcing it into a static image. A resilient garden is one that can change while retaining its underlying structure.
The Public Life Of A Botanic Garden
Public landscapes gain meaning through repeated use. A garden may be photographed when the flowers are at their peak, but its real success is measured across ordinary days: morning walkers passing through, students sketching plants, office workers eating lunch and families returning as children grow.
That everyday quality is particularly important at Kings Park, where tourism and local use exist side by side. The new garden contributes another reason to visit without competing with the park’s established attractions. It adds a more intimate destination within a much larger network of paths, collections and open spaces.
For Perth’s design community, the project also demonstrates the value of landscape architecture as civic work. It shows how planting, access, water management and cultural interpretation can be developed as one design problem. The garden’s contribution is therefore both sensory and practical: it offers beauty while making a case for climate-aware, locally grounded public space.
Lessons For Future Australian Landscapes
The project offers several principles that can guide designers working in other Australian cities:
- Begin with the existing ecology, climate and cultural context rather than imposing a generic garden model.
- Use native planting for its full horticultural range, including structure, seasonal colour, scent and habitat value.
- Design paths, shade and resting places as essential parts of inclusion and public comfort.
- Treat maintenance, irrigation and plant establishment as design considerations from the outset.
- Allow landscapes to mature, adapt and develop meaning through repeated public use.
The strongest lesson is that a contemporary garden does not need to announce itself through spectacle. It can be ambitious in its thinking while remaining generous in its daily use. At Kings Park, the landscape architect’s work is grounded in the particular conditions of Perth: bright light, sandy soils, dry summers, sudden seasonal abundance and a living cultural landscape that demands respect.
That combination gives the garden its character. It is carefully made, yet it does not feel overdetermined. It offers a composed experience while leaving room for weather, growth, wildlife and the unpredictable ways people occupy public space.
Projects such as this are part of a wider conversation about how Australian cities can create landscapes that are beautiful, ecologically responsible and culturally attentive. Readers tracking that conversation can find related design stories and local industry coverage through Contemporary’s program, where architecture, interiors, landscape and community are considered together.
Visit the garden across different seasons, take time to notice how the planting changes and consider the infrastructure beneath its visual calm. For further reporting on Western Australian design and the people shaping its built environment, explore Contemporary’s design coverage and follow the project as it matures.
