This Melbourne train station won the National Landscape Architecture Award for its Indigenous-led design, native gardens and Victoria's first train station rooftop garden.
Deer Park Station in Melbourne’s west has won a national landscape architecture award for its Indigenous-led design and native gardens. The Melbourne train station, located along the Ararat and Warrnambool V/Line corridors, took out the Infrastructure category at the 2025 National Landscape Architecture Awards, run by the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects.
The awards celebrated 36 projects across 17 categories, with Deer Park Station recognised for its commitment to protecting and regenerating Country through community engagement.
Stay up to date with what’s happening in and around Melbourne here.
How a level crossing removal became a Melbourne train station showpiece
The station was completed in 2023 as part of the Mt Derrimut Road level crossing removal under Victoria’s Big Build. Landscape architects Hassell designed the station precinct in collaboration with Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation Elders Aunty Gail Smith and Aunty Julieanne Axford, with Denton Corker Marshall serving as architect and co-urban designer. The Western Program Alliance, comprising Arup, Mott MacDonald, McConnell Dowell, the Level Crossing Removal Project and V/Line, delivered the broader project.
The station’s forecourt sits adjacent to a protected ecological zone home to remnant grasslands and habitat for local fauna, including the endangered Golden Sun Moth. Rather than treating the protected land as an obstacle, the design team built a concept around it, drawing on a narrative the Elders call the “layers of Country” — a set of stories recognising Bunjil the Great Creator Spirit, typically depicted as a wedge-tailed eagle, as the creator of all layers of Country.
Victoria’s first rooftop garden on a Melbourne train station
Deer Park Station features Victoria’s first rooftop garden on a station building, planted with native species selected to boost biodiversity, reduce the heat island effect of surrounding structures and absorb stormwater runoff. Across the wider precinct, more than 50,000 new trees, shrubs and grasses have been planted — a dramatic transformation for a space typically defined by steel, concrete and timetable posters.
Three boulders weighing between seven and 10 tonnes sit within the station grounds, each oriented toward the You Yangs, Mt Disappointment and Mt Macedon. These peaks have served as navigation landmarks in Indigenous creation stories since well before colonisation.
An award-winning Melbourne train station in a rapidly transforming network
The station also features lift access to both platforms, an air-conditioned waiting room, a bus interchange and 487 car parking spaces. The Mt Derrimut Road boom gates previously caused congestion for more than 23,000 vehicles daily, sitting down for up to 60 per cent of the morning peak.
Deer Park Station’s award arrives as Melbourne’s rail network undergoes its most significant transformation in decades. The Metro Tunnel opened five new underground stations late last year, while two train lines — Lilydale and Sunbury — are now completely boom gate free. Further west, a new station precinct is taking shape in Melton, and concept designs have been released for a nature-inspired upgrade at Macleod on the Hurstbridge Line.
For more information on the Deer Park Station project, head here.
