Six Parks in Australia Honoured among the World's Best

Do you know six parks in Australia have been placed among the world’s best? Two of Sydney’s favourite parks have been named in the list.

We know that many Australian parks are top notch, but it seems that world’s park lovers have noticed how great they are too. Six parks in the country have been recognised among the world’s best parks, receiving the international Green Flag Award this year.

Green Flag Award and its criteria

Launched in 1966, the Green Flag Award scheme is managed from the United Kingdom by Keep Britain Tidy, an independent environmental charity. The award is given out by green space experts who assess parks around the world across eight criteria, including horticultural standards, cleanliness, sustainability, community involvement and providing a warm welcome.

Six Australian parks awarded

Centennial Park  (via Pixabay)

Six parks in Australia have been recognised by the Green Flag Award scheme. They are Centennial Park and Sydney Park (Sydney), Roma Street Parkland and South Bank Parklands (Brisbane) and Royal Park and Fitzroy Gardens (Melbourne).

Located in the inner-Sydney suburb of St Peter’s, Sydney Park has been upgraded in the past few years, including a playground, a kiosk and amenities buildings, and the city’s largest piece of stormwater harvesting infrastructure. 

Centennial Park is located in the eastern suburbs of Sydney. It is one of Australia’s most famous park and is listed on the New South Wales Heritage Register. The park features gardens, ponds, grand avenues, statues, historic buildings and sporting fields.

Feel like exploring Sydney? Check out our favourite things to do in this city.

As the largest in Melbourne, Royal Park features a diverse landscape with wetlands and grasslands. Green Flag judges described its Nature Play playground as “a well thought out and maintained facility”. 

Fitzroy Gardens has been praised by the Green Flag judges for the way it has been well maintained while experiencing a high number of visitors. The gardens got a $13.9 million makeover in 2015, including a new visitor center, a cafe, a garden area and a underground stormwater tank.

Roma Street Parkland in Brisbane was designed by PARC (a consortium including Gillespies Australia, AECOM, DEM Design and Citvitas Urban Design). The park was praised by landscape architecture academic Catherin Bull for the way the “design challenged and extended, for the first time, the local tradition of exotic display planting, incorporating plants not only from the world’s subtropics but from many of Queensland’s forgotten or ignored ecosystems.”