Holy Moly! The New Park Looks Amazing!

And the living is easy…

t only took us a year to get the plans for the town’s new dog park, and now, just six weeks later, the whole shebang is here.

Yep, it’s going to be one hell of a spectacular park, 16 acres of pure escape linking the harbour to The Cliff Walk.

To be honest, we’ve just seen all these pics ourselves, and it’s a little overwhelming. The designers have cleverly incorporated the old with the new by utilising stone from the original harbour pier, plus the old Gap Bridge, whilst also allowing for just about every perfect day you could hope for, with a children’s play area, that doggie park, sculptures, hideaways, Teletubbies-esque play areas, and on and on.

Here’s the official – and mildly surreal – spiel…

The design of the park aims to protect the coastal amenity and scenic quality of the area while providing a safe and sustainable recreational park. The design includes undulating mounding and a safety barrier to prevent the public  from accessing the clifftop edge. The undulating mounding will compliment the character of the surrounding  landscape and be reminiscent of coastal dunes.

The design of the park creates new wildlife corridors linking with the landscape along the Bray Head walk. The mounding which shields the public from the cliff edge will also preserve areas of long grass from pedestrian traffic, creating undisturbed wildlife corridors. These areas of undisturbed meadow will about the existing open drain which has good vegetative cover and allows wildlife access to fresh water.

The designed mounds will also facilitate the successful inclusion of trees within the park. Not only will the mounds  provide shelter for the trees but also the people walking through the park on the path to the Bray Head Walk. This  access path has been aligned to follow the desire line.

The sustainability of public parks can be greatly affected by ‘fear of crime’. The park has been designed to reduce the perception of ‘fear of crime’. The main plaza and open play area are positioned in an area of the park that is overlooked by houses and apartments creating a self‐policed area. The dog park has been located close to the exit onto the Bray Head Walk to ensure that there is a high use area within the park reducing the level of ‘fear of crime’. This area of the park can also be overlooked from the seating areas/ viewing points on top of the mounds.

Dense planting will be focused along the shared boundary with linear car parking and along the railway line. The railway line planting will create a strong wildlife corridor. The planting along the linear car parking will prevent children from running out from the park between parked cars.

The mounds and areas of long grass will only be topsoiled where mown paths are to be created. The rest shall be subsoil to facilitate the sustainable introduction of wildflower species. A coastal grass seed mix shall be used throughout. In recreation areas this coastal grass seed mix shall be tailored for amenity use to provide a quality sward. These areas are also sheltered by the sculpted levels to ensure that they have some level of protection from the salt laden winds.

The park will have a strong ‘sense of place’ rooted in the coastal character of the site. Pier stones shall be used to provide seating throughout the park. Given the coastal location, the granite pier stones are a more sustainable seating option than metal or wooden benches. Building stone from The Gap Bridge shall be used to create interpretative signage relating to the development of Greystones harbour. The pathways will be surfaced with Ballylusk 6mm down to dust.

In brief, the park is designed to be a sustainable low maintenance public amenity which reflects the site’s unique coastal location.

Glad to hear it. You can check out the full plans below, along with all the important measurements, ingredients and general statistics.

Boom! This is going to be a beautiful addition to the town…

Hmmm, it’s possible we were sold a pup here. You can find out how the park turned out in September 2020 here.