The Chinese Garden of Friendship
Conservation Management Plan
Place Management NSW
Sydney, NSW
The Chinese Garden of Friendship in Sydney’s Darling Harbour offers a tranquil respite from the city for workers, locals and tourists.
GML prepared a conservation management plan for this heritage listed site.
Serenely beautiful, and a popular tourist attraction, the Chinese Garden of Friendship is a walled garden that recreates the harmony and philosophy of a traditional Chinese garden with water features, traditional pavilions, plants and the spirituality of feng shui.
Opened as part of Australia’s bicentennial celebrations in 1988, the Chinese Garden was built through a partnership with the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, in the province of Guangdong, and Sydney, NSW (being sister cities of sister states).
To help recognise and conserve the significant values of the Garden and its special place in Australian–Chinese relations, GML prepared a conservation management plan (CMP) in partnership with Context Landscape Architects, on behalf of Place Management NSW. This was the first CMP for the site.
GML understood the importance of a principal guiding document for the identification and future management of heritage values across the site. The result is a visually attractive, user-friendly document, written in plain English, that will facilitate conservation and planning at the Garden into the future.
The CMP was Highly Commended at the 2019 National Trust Heritage Awards.
