The 24 hectare Elara Riparian Parklands located within Stockland’s new Elara Development at Marsden Park – a newly planned community for over 25,000 residents – represents one of the largest reconstructed riparian environments in North West Sydney’s recent history.

This vast new landscape project comprises of cover 17 hectares of riparian vegetation and stream stabilisation works with over 5 hectares of public amenity parklands. The new riparian zone and creek links into the Stoney Creek / South Creek catchment that feeds the Nepean River.

The riparian zones achieve important urban water quality requirements through a complex series of vegetated ponds, riffles, basins and raingardens. The revegetation strategy focused on reflecting the rich floristic mix required to sustain a vibrant terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem, combined with key public amenity landscapes. When fully established the project will have planted over 34,000 new trees and over one million plants which will provide critical human urban canopy in addition to habitat for a diverse range of flora and fauna associated with the Cumberland Plain.

PROJECT METRICS:

• Total parklands 24 Ha
• Site joins the Shanes Park conservation zones (flora & fauna rich zone)
• Lake size in basin 3ha of water
• Riparian parklands 11.5 Ha
• Total Pedestrian paths: 6.9 km
• 4 road culvert crossings (lots of bat habitat)
• 3 pedestrian bridges
• 900 000 new native plants grown from seed for the project all from Sydney Basin
• 30,500 new trees (native) in riparian zones

Location: Elara Precinct 5, Riparian Parklands, Marsden Park NSW
Designer: Paterson Design Studio P/L
Photography: Stockland & Dylan Charles
Client: Stockland