Floating garden trial to combat urban heat in Parramatta's CBD

Garden trays in Centenary and Parramatta Squares have been helping keep the City cool this summer with the CBD hot spots part of a heat reduction experiment with floating garden creators Future Village.

This year’s project follows the success of last summer’s trial in Parramatta Square and has been expanded to cover 58 square metres in the heart of Parramatta with 600 plants as well as 60 additional trays outside Accor Stadium.  

The project explores the impacts and scalability of moveable garden trays in public spaces to help make these areas more comfortable on hot days.

City of Parramatta Lord Mayor Cr Martin Zaiter said the project proved to be a big community win last year with people rating the project four and a half out of five stars.

“Residents and visitors told us the floating garden improved the look and feel of our public spaces in the initial trial, so it was a no brainer for us to bring the program back to the City,” Cr Zaiter said.

“While it’s still early days, the plants are proven to cool down our public spaces and create a mini urban oasis for our community.

“We’re proud to lead the way in sustainable initiatives like this one – we’ve been recognised globally for excellence in sustainable design for PHIVE and were the first to achieve Australian carbon neutral certification service in a public domain for Parramatta Square.”

Future Village received funding from the NSW Government for this project through the Office of the Chief Scientist & Engineer’s Small Business Innovation & Research (SBIR) Program and is collaborating with the University of Technology Sydney on the trial.

Future Village Director, Ben Perry said it made sense to expand the project further in Parramatta after a successful first trial round last year.

"Our initial results confirm that a floating garden can effectively cool public spaces,” Mr Perry said.

“Conducting a larger trial allowed us to validate these findings. We now aim to determine the green space required to maintain temperatures below 36°C during extreme heat.” The NSW Government’s Chief Scientist & Engineer, Professor Hugh Durrant-Whyte said the SBIR Program is designed to support innovative small businesses to develop their technology to solve problems posed by NSW Government agencies, in this case the Urban Heat Island Challenge.

“Future Village’s floating garden solution is both an aesthetically pleasing and highly effective way to make our city centres more liveable in hot weather;” Professor Durrant-Whyte said.

“I congratulate the company and City of Parramatta for their forward thinking in achieving this outstanding result.”

The floating garden installations are expected to be on site until April and after the trial period, the plants will be reused for other projects.

For more information, visit Council’s website.