This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.
Site-level location · 35.2872° S, 149.0686° E
FIELD GUIDE
The story
Giant acorn cubbies and enormous banksia cones, built on the idea that seeds are the beginning of life in the forest.
The POD Playground at the National Arboretum Canberra was designed by Simone Bliss of TCL Landscape Architects, and it won the Victoria Design Award at the 2013 Australian Institute of Landscape Architects Awards and a 2013 Melbourne Design Award. The Arboretum describes it as designed to create wonder, imagination and enchantment, and to encourage activity and spontaneity in play.
The conceptual fit is exact. The National Arboretum is a hundred forests of threatened and symbolic trees planted across hills burnt out in the 2003 Canberra bushfires – an institution entirely about regeneration over a very long timescale. A playground built from oversized seed pods puts children inside the first stage of that process.
The banksia cone is the better of the two forms. Banksia seed pods are among the strangest objects in the Australian bush – woody, follicled, and famously the source of May Gibbs's Big Bad Banksia Men – and enlarging one produces a climbing structure with genuine character rather than a generic dome.
Acorns bring the other half of the Arboretum's argument: exotic and native forests side by side, which is what the place actually contains.
It is one of very few objects in this catalogue designed by landscape architects rather than sculptors or sign-writers, and the awards reflect that.
The playground is open daily beside the Village Centre.
Photograph
This is a photograph, shown separately from the illustration artwork.
The National Arboretum Canberra explicitly describes the playground as featuring giant acorn cubbies and enormous banksia cones, and confirms it is open daily beside the Village Centre.
ACCESS
POD Playground is beside the National Arboretum Canberra Village Centre. The playground footprint is map-checked separately from the general visitor arrival. Navigate to the Arboretum main car park and continue on the sealed accessible path to the playground.
