Location: Tawa
Entrance and exit points: Enter from Davies, Luckie or Oxford Streets.
Brief description: The park features
- a play area with a mouse wheel, slide, and swings, including a giant swing for adults
- a half basketball court
- a dog exercise area
- the Brian Webb Memorial Rose Garden
- two electric barbecues
- picnic areas
- kids wheeled skate area for bikes, roller skates and scooters (the skate park is next door behind the pool)
- public toilets
- Tawa Pool.
The Tawa Valley Pathway, Ara Tawa, runs through the reserve.
Parking: Parking at the end of Davies, Luckie and Oxford Streets.
Accessibility: Flat, easy access, sealed pathways.
Dogs: Off-leash in exercise area and on-leash on shared path. No dogs in playground. The dog exercise area is fenced from Main Road but is not fully fenced.
History: Grasslees Reserve was developed after Tawa Borough Council purchased the land in 1958. It contains a memorial to ethnographer Elsdon Best, one of New Zealand’s foremost writers on pre-European Māori life, who was born at the original Grasslees farm in 1856.
The area was upgraded in 2014. The Grasslees Reserve upgrade, funded through a $550,000 grant from the Charles Plimmer Bequest and $90,000 from Council budgets, joins the two halves of the park with a new bridge across Porirua Stream.
Natural elements are a feature of the park. Most of the playground materials are timber, and bark and sand are used instead of artificial surfaces.
Visit map