Geographical focus: Gundara Street Neighbourhood Playground (also known as Barada Crescent Playground), Aranda (map).
Activities: We meet ad-hoc to improve the park.
Contact: For more information or if you would like to volunteer, please contact Anne at anne.gregory3@gmail.com.
Background:
With the help of an Adopt-A-Park grant and the support of the ACT Government and the Ginninderra Catchment Group, our Friends group have begun work to improve the neglected Gundara Street Neighbourhood Playground. Our aim is to make the park a more inviting space for the community as well as provide food and shelter for smaller birds, bees and butterflies, address erosion and compaction and provide examples of Australian native plants and their uses.
By December 2025, seven freeform garden beds have been created around existing trees in one corner of the park. These beds are connected by wide paths so the gardens can be appreciated by groups of people as well as parents with prams, elderly people with walkers or wheelchair users.
Each bed has a theme for the planting including Bush Food, Medicinal Plants, Flower garden, Bird, bee and butterfly garden, Daisy garden and Erosion Control and includes plants consistent with that theme (see the concept plan below).
As an illustration, the plants in bush food garden are all sources of food either directly or indirectly. While berries are eaten straight off the bush, the flowers of Indigofera are steeped in water and used to stun fish.
Most plants are hardy and will grow in part shade. Indigofera requires a little more care.
Plantings include:
- *Dianella revoluta – edible berries
- *Rubus parvifolius – native raspberry
- *Billardiera scandens – edible fruits
- *Coprosma quadrifida – white berries
- *Wahlenbergia stricta – edible flowers
- *Banksia marginata – flowers soaked in water and used to make a drink
- *Microseris lanceolata – yam daisy – edible tuber
- *Bulbine bulbosa – underground corm roasted and eaten like potato
- *Lomandra longifolia – white leaf base and seeds edible
- *Acacia implexa – seeds ground to make flour
- Sorghum leiocliadrum – a staple grain
- *Linum marginale – edible seeds, stems used to make fishing line
- *Indigofera australis – used to stun fish
- *Hardenbergia violecia – leaves boiled to make a tea
- Leptospermum scoparium – Manuka used to make tea by early settlers
Plants marked with an * feature in ‘Ngunnawal Plant Use’ produced by the ACT Government.