Children visiting the Werribee Open Range Zoo can now mimic the monkeys at Monkey Play – a small nature-based play space designed by Jeavons Landscape Architects.
Monkey Play invites younger children to express their inner ‘monkey’ – negotiating changing levels, and testing their agility and climbing skills on ropes connected to tree posts. A simple palette of materials including logs and large, flat boulders placed for steps, tree trunks laid horizontally to form a ‘scramble’, timber decks, and salvaged timber posts set upright with ropes strung between are set amongst bold foliage planting.
The space provides a casual shady picnic spot along the visitors’ route through the zoo and helps to draw the attention of visitors to the monkey enclosure.
Werribee Zoo aims to provide a quality natural outdoors environment for children in the rapidly growing pre-school demographic (2-6 years) in the surrounding suburbs and this space is one of a number of purpose built spaces aimed to meet this growing demand.