Wharf Street

This Wharf Street project is a water sensitive urban design project

The project integrates an urban parkland with a foreshore wetland to restore the recreational and ecological links between the Canning River and the City of Canning. The wetland system incorporates open water bodies, surface and subsurface flow vegetated wetlands and vegetated swales to treat and improve stormwater runoff from an urbanised 129ha catchment prior to discharging into the Canning River.

Conceptually, the landscape design is a “rivulet” that physically links the community to the river via a series of connected spaces that meander through the site. The design provided for broader options for enhancing green corridors and stormwater management at nearby sites, extending the treatment site into the Canning River Regional Park, and enabling an increase in the treatment efficiency of the stormwater entering the site.

Awards and achievements

• Stormwater WA Award for Excellence, Research and Innovation, 2015, Winner

Key outcomes

• Incorporation of best practice stormwater principles that have improved stormwater quality entering the Canning River – discharge water complies with ANZECC guidelines for nutrients and metals.
• Revegetation of the Canning river foreshore using endemic Swan Coastal Plain species in assemblages of open woodland, and wetland vegetation zones.
• Improvements to pedestrian access and public open space which encourages appropriate exploration of the wetlands and Canning River foreshore.
• Provision of an innovative and contemporary landscape that offers significant value adds (recreational, aesthetic, biodiversity) to the local area, strengthening the foreshore link with the civic centre and surrounding neighbourhood
• Achievement of a balance between provision of recreational space and water treatment through the implementation of sub-surface flow wetlands below grassed area.