URBAN GARDEN TO TRANSFORM MELBOURNE ARTS PRECINCT

The 18,000sqm urban garden, Laak Boorndap (pronounded Lark-Born-Darp) will transform the Melbourne Arts Precinct. The garden is designed by the Melbourne studio of international design practice Hassell and New York’s SO-IL, with internationally renowned horticulturalists Nigel Dunnett and James Hitchmough, who are working closely with plant expert Jac Semmler from Melbourne company, Super Bloom. Planted entirely on an elevated deck, this remarkable new public garden is at the forefront of contemporary garden design – being unique in the world in its planting density, scale and climate resiliency.

Taking advantage of the relatively mild winters in Melbourne, the garden has been designed to flourish year-round, ensuring it is beautiful and ever-changing, and continually fostering biodiversity. The garden showcases a highly dynamic and multi-layered planting design using a mix of native and introduced species including carefully selected trees, perennials, grasses and flora. A bold and unique approach to naturalistic planting, visitors will be able to enjoy six different areas of thematic planting within the garden that intersect and celebrate the natural composition of Australian landscape.

The name, bestowed to the garden by Traditional Owner, Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Language Elder, Aunty Gail Smith to honour the beautiful place that the garden will create for all, symbolises the growing representation of First Peoples cultures around the Arts Precinct. Aunty Gail Smith says, “it’s not just a placename, it brings Sky Country, the heavens, and everyone back together on sacred ground.”

Reflecting First Peoples’ long tradition of gathering by and caring for the Birrarung (Yarra River), the new garden will be home to a waterway that people can sit near and take in the sounds of trickling water. The waterway will run along the edge of the garden near The Fox: NGV Contemporary.

Complementing the rich tapestry of planting across the year, Laak Boorndap will present contemporary art and activation including new artwork commissions by First Peoples. The garden will also be home to significant contemporary sculpture from the collections of the NGV and Arts Centre Melbourne, open to the public both day and night.

Laak Boorndap delivers another crucial intervention into this rapidly growing part of the city, creating a new pedestrian pathway that will change how the Melbourne Arts Precinct – and Southbank as a whole – is accessed by visitors, residents, students and workers. Built over Sturt St between City Road and Southbank Boulevard (which has been transformed from a bitumen roadway into the busy loading docks and back of house areas for NGV International, Arts Centre Melbourne, and the new The Fox: NGV Contemporary) the garden provides a quick, accessible and safe connection from the city directly from Princes Bridge through to Southbank Boulevard and the Arts Precinct.

Works on the new urban garden are scheduled to start in 2026, and the Melbourne Arts Precinct Transformation project is expected to be completed in 2028.