Something's Been Brewing In Christchurch's Avon-Ōtākaro Forest Park…

A year ago, we provided over $60,000 to environmental green space experts The Green Lab to create a leading accessible sensory nature space in Christchurch – Te Kohanga Taiao Sensory Nature Play Park – which is now open to the public.  

The joint project has brought a deserted residential playground on Brooker Ave back to life as a nature haven designed to encourage a deeper connection with the environment and with sustainability, accessibility, and biodiversity in mind.  

Beautifully nestled within restoration plantings thanks to the efforts of Avon-Ōtākaro Forest Park Trust, the new Sensory Nature Play Park also aims to serve as an educational hub for all ages and abilities.  

Its design encourages children to discover nature by feeling different textures of leaves and wood, to smell a variety of native plant aromas, and listen for the variety in natural sounds like tapping on wood and rustling leaves.  

Once a former residential area, the park is now home to multiple wētā ‘hotels’ and ‘apartments’ made at workshops held at Phillipstown Community Hub. These are warm and dry spaces where our ecologically important native wētā, bees and wasps can keep safe from predators like rats and birds.  

The park has been designed to significantly increase and encourage the great biodiversity of the area. A ‘bioblitz’ held at the site as part of the City Nature Challenge uncovered more than 100 different species of plants, insects, spiders, and fish in just a few hours. 

This beautiful space has plenty for visitors to enjoy:  

• An active zone designed around large existing logs that children can balance, climb, and jump between and crawl through recycled Hynds tunnels brought to life with beautifully hand-painted murals. 
  
  

• Adjacent to the Active Zone are two large sturdy picnic tables, optimised for accessibility with space for a wheelchair to pull up and enjoy a picnic lunch.
    

• A Sensory Rope Trail has been constructed from recycled mooring rope donated by a local fishing company. This helps guide blind and low-vision visitors around the border where the smell and touch senses are engaged passing by native broom. 
  
  

• The Sound Garden has been constructed with bamboo tubes and a large steel gong drum tied between tall Future Post poles (made from recycled soft plastics). Sticks and tools have been attached to the poles so visitors can tap or knock on the installation to hear a variety of sounds and get creative with musical experiments. 
  
  

• From the Active Zone, children can crawl through tunnels to explore a bush zone, whisk along the log-hop surrounded by tussocks, and cross over the path to stepping stones that lead down to Corsers Stream which provides an exciting opportunity for nature water play. 
  
  

• An old tree stump has been transformed into a children’s creation station where, by collecting interesting items from around the park, creativity can come to life through play with new-found natural materials. 

We were committed to ensuring the project has minimal impact on the environment, embodying sustainable practices throughout. 

Fence and signage posts throughout the park are made from recycled soft plastics – sourced by New Zealand company Future Post, an initiative that recycles soft plastics into enduring and sustainable fence posts. Our coffee packaging is accepted under the soft plastic recycling scheme, enabling a full-circle sustainability effort for Hummingbird’s involvement in the park. 

We donated hessian coffee sacks that have been laid around the existing and new native plantings, providing a protective mulch layer that suppresses weed growth and will break down over time.  

An additional recycling initiative has seen the installation of a compost bin, where nearby cafes using Hummingbird coffee can deposit their leftover coffee grounds to use as compost and support the growth of new and existing plants.