St Patricks Catholic Parish School

RB Landscapes has designed and completed the landscape Master Plan for St Patrick’s Catholic Parish School in Mentone. The impressive finished product includes an Outdoor Kitchen, Permaculture Orchard, Veggie Patch, Undercover Bike Storage, Tree House Adventure Playground, Amphitheatre and Passive Recreation Spaces. It has a 240m synthetic turf running track, with sprint track included around its perimeter.

The outdoor kitchen precinct to the east of the O’Hanlon Centre creates a unique learning and entertainment space. A central table with tree at its centre forms the heart of the kitchen. The bench surrounding the classroom to the south contains a sink, BBQ and Wood Fired Oven.

A new bike storage area with both covered and undercover bike racks, forms a pick up and drop off courtyard at the front of the school for students to wait in off Mitchell Street.

A new passive play area divides the Basketball Courts and Oval/Running Track. In the centre, is a sandpit island surrounded by swale. Small ponds in the creek bed and hidden courtyards create a great variety of spaces in this area. The Picnic Pond is a passive play space located around the main pond which collects water off the basketball courts and oval through the swale around the ovals perimeter. Around the pond is a picnic deck, a water quality observation deck. There is a bike fitness station which when peddling it circulates water from the bond, to wine barrell. to then return to the pond. Near this area is a hand water pump play area.

The existing playground to the north west is retained and extended. To the north of the oval, the landscape will be built up in order to create space for a car tyre amphitheatre. In the north eastern corner is a passive play boulder garden with interactive sculpture rocks.

The Tree House Adventure Playground consists of a series of raised platforms around the existing trees on the western boarder of the school. The platforms support a range of play equipment. The Produce Garden contains a permaculture orchard, indigenous plant trail, produce plots and storage sheds. The permaculture orchard is a contained area planted with fruit trees which allows free range chickens to graze underneath.

The Indigenous plant trail is an educational garden contains edible and non-edible Australian plants and leads into a more formal produce garden in the south east corner of the school. Storage sheds to the north of the produce garden include a propagation house, and provide equipment storage of garden and sporting equipment.

The finished product is an impressive disaply of a sustainable outdoor play space which will be enjoyed by the students for years to come