Kensington Gardens Reserve Project

The Kensington Gardens Reserve Project, located in the Kensington Wama / Kensington Gardens Reserve, was officially opened in January 2022.

The project has completely revitalised the City of Burnside’s most popular recreational reserve and delivered a range of environmental, recreational, cultural, and economic benefits.

Council has worked very closely with Kaurna Traditional Owners to ensure best-practice cultural heritage management throughout the project and deliver a range of cultural heritage recognition initiatives, including a place of reflection and a cultural walk with interpretive signage and artwork.

The project represents the exciting start of Council’s journey towards reconciliation and has provided a platform to discuss, learn and experience hands-on Kaurna culture.

In addition to the obvious recreational and amenity benefits, the project has delivered substantial environmental improvements including:

• Improved stormwater quality runoff from the polluted urban Wattle Park catchment before it is discharged into the downstream Stonyfell Creek system.
• An extensive revegetation program with at least 40 new trees, 1,450 shrubs, over 4,300 groundcover species, 4,800 new biozone plantings, and over 10,000 new plants in the wetland.
• Improved local biodiversity, tree health, habitat, and riparian ecosystem and
• Opportunities for future harvesting and reuse of stormwater.

Thank you to our funding partners:

• $7.4 million total cost.
• $3 million from the Federal Government.
• $850,000 from the South Australian Government’s Open Space grant program.
• $215,904 from Green Adelaide’s 2019-20 Water Sustainability Grants scheme.
• $81,000 from Tennis SA / Tennis Australia.

A time capsule, built by members of The Shed on Conyngham Street was buried on site. Inside the capsule are drawings by students of the Kensington Gardens Preschool, items from the Burnside Historical Society, a recent newspaper and photographs of the Kensington Gardens Reserve project. The time capsule will be opened in the year 2072.

Mayor Anne Monceaux announced the winner of the 'Name the Yultu' competition is Narayan, 9, of Kensington Park, and a student at Pembroke. Artist Alan Sumner created the yultu (Kaurna word for frog) to feature in the new Kensington Wama nature play space. The sculpture uses wood from trees that were removed as part of the creation of the new wetland.

The winning name is Anura.

Find out more about this project at engage.burnside.

The Kensington Gardens Reserve project is part of the Kensington Gardens Reserve Master Plan(PDF, 4MB), which was endorsed by Council in December 2017 after extensive community engagement.