Tauranga City Council’s McLaren Falls Park has been awarded a Green Flag award, the international mark of a quality park, for a second time.
The park was judged across eight criteria, including horticultural standards, cleanliness, sustainability, community involvement and providing a warm welcome.
“McLaren Falls is an absolutely stunning park and the team of rangers has done a fantastic job maintaining and enhancing it. It’s gone from strength to strength as they’ve built new tracks, upgraded facilities, and developed the park into a very popular camping spot,” says Mark Smith, Manager: Parks and Recreation.
“It’s also one of the country’s best and biggest arboretums, thanks to the volunteer work the Tauranga Tree Society has done over more than 50 years.”
In total this year, 17 parks in New Zealand have been awarded a Green Flag.
The Green Flag Award scheme is being piloted in New Zealand by the New Zealand Recreation Association. The scheme was launched in 1996 and is managed in England by Keep Britain Tidy, now flags fly over 1,700 sites across the UK, Republic of Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, Finland and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Australia and New Zealand.
McLaren Falls Park comprises of 190 hectares of pastoral and horticultural parkland set alongside Lake McLaren. The park features six kilometres of road and 12 kilometres of walking tracks.
It has around 250,000 visitors a year.