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Theme 2: Parks and green spaces

Strategic Objective: Green and open spaces are provided, well-utilised, and enhanced.

Case study: Victoria Park Regional Playground upgrade

Over recent years, different improvements have been made to Victoria Park in Kew as part of the Victoria Park Concept Master Plan. We have been working on the next upgrade to the northern playgrounds, creating a new, larger-scale regional playground that enhances park amenities, improves accessibility, and creates a place for the whole community to enjoy together.

Feedback received from the community during 2 rounds of consultation helped to shape the design of the new playground. The exciting new playground includes the community’s most popular themes to create a fun and inclusive design.

The Victoria Park Regional Playground is supported by the Victorian Government through the Suburban Parks Program. We also received support from the National Ageing Research Institute for a dedicated seniors’ fitness area, and from Kew Rotary for an accessible double barbecue.

Looking down on the Victoria park regional playground area that has been newly renovated with new equipment and landscaping

Theme 2 performance

Below is a breakdown of the strategic indicators, progress of initiatives and other service performance indicators for this theme. You can find out more detail about these indicators and previous year’s results in the full report.

You can also read through our continuous improvement initiatives, community engagement, and benchmarking activities for this theme in the full report.

Strategic indicators

In some cases our strategic indicators saw either consistent or improved results in FY2021-22. The strategic indicators that met or exceeded the forecast include:

  • user satisfaction with a range of parks in Boroondara, benchmarked with participating councils (80%)
  • the number of trees on Council managed land (44,885 trees).

One indicator did not meet our forecast this year, this was the satisfaction with the appearance of public areas (79, out of 100). The appearance of public areas remains one of our top performing areas in the Customer Satisfaction Survey, achieving a rating of 79 in both 2022 and 2021. We also remain significantly above both metro (72) and state-wide (71) averages for this indicator.

Progress of initiatives in the Budget

All initiatives for this theme aside from one were completed in the FY2021-22. This includes:

  • proactively managing and renewing our ageing street and park trees by implementing year 4 of our Tree Strategy
  • engaging 200 participants and activating 12 community spaces through the ‘Fit Park Series’
  • implementing a program to increase the planting of trees on local streets to 1,000 per year
  • developing a master plan for Gardiners Creek
  • installing solar lights along 500m of Boroondara park paths
  • developing a plan to identify suitable public open spaces to install outdoor exercise equipment.

The one remaining initiative was completing construction of play spaces at Deepdene Park in Deepdene, Central Gardens in Hawthorn, Hilda Street Reserve in Balwyn, and the new Regional Playground at Victoria Park. This initiative is 95% complete, with the Victoria Park Regional playground, Central Gardens and Deepdene Park nearing completion with slight delays due to COVID-19 supply chain issues. Works are anticipated to be completed in late July 2022 with Hilda Street to commence in August 2022 due to contractor availability.