Wagga children are in for a treat as the council prepares to open its new playground with a twist at the botanic gardens on Friday.
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The new native garden section of the Entwine project features a natural playground, which is expected to be a drawcard with logs, timber and rocks to climb on.
The council's project manager Thomas Lemerle said the whole ethos of the space has been to keep the playground natural and to attract some of the half-a-million botanic gardens visitors over to the northern end.
"Most of those people's focus is the other side with the zoo and cafe, which is great, but we would also like to bring people over to the museum, towards Kurrajong and use the native garden space a bit more," he said.
Mr Lemerle said a big part of the project also involved an upgrade to the Brolga Pond, which has not been worked on since 1995.
"We took out some of the well-loved features like the bamboo, but I think we have done it justice by reusing it in the play space," he said.
"The idea has been to turn it into a small event space for 80 to 100 people. We have had a couple of weddings there already, which have gone off quite well and we're looking at some small music events in 2021."
Contractor Adam Morrison said it has been great to have the opportunity to "stamp their name" on a local project that even their children will come and use.
"It is always good to do something like this and it is going to be with us in the generations to come and to bring our children down to play and use the space," he said.
In other news:
The completion of these two spaces comes after the council engaged a builder for the Museum of the Riverina redevelopment just across the road at Monday night's council meeting.
Mr Lemerle said this is just one of the other parts of the overall precinct project that the council has been working on.
He said the construction works for the museum is expected to start in the coming months with the goal to reopen in early 2022.