Brook Waimārama Sanctuary

Creating a nature-immersive place-brand for Brook Valley Holiday Reserve

Overview

Brook Valley Holiday Reserve sits right against the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary—the South Island’s largest fenced sanctuary, home to kiwi, tuatara, and carnivorous snails. We helped them refresh the campground branding—building a story around its authenticity and proximity to nature. We worked on strategy, name development, and place branding across their numerous touch-points.

Scary, cold and dark—the challenge of changing perceptions

Brook Valley Holiday Park sits inside the grounds of the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary, just minutes from Nelson. It’s a campground with real bones—proximity to the Sanctuary, native bush, birdsong, walking and biking trails—but a name, identity and set of facilities that no longer reflected any of it. Locals described it as run down, scary, cold and dark. Guests loved the setting but found the experience tired and inconsistent.

Downing was engaged to rethink the park from the ground up: its name, its brand, and the physical experience of arriving and moving through the site.

Creating a place-brand that compliments and elevates the Sanctuary’s kaupapa

The brief was to create a unique, nature-immersive camping experience that complements the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary’s brand and kaupapa—elevating the campground so it sits comfortably alongside the Sanctuary’s conservation story, rather than in contrast to it. Financial viability was the immediate priority, with the campground positioned to grow, over time, into a genuine eco-tourism destination that contributes to the Sanctuary’s wider “halo” effect.

Why we kept "Brook Valley" and changed everything else

Place branding starts with the name. Social listening across hundreds of online reviews showed that guests genuinely valued the camping experience—the friction was with perception, not substance—and that “Brook Valley” carried strong local equity as a geographic identifier. Rather than replace it, we recommended retaining it.

What needed to change was the promise. “Holiday Park” said little about what set this place apart. We recommended Brook Valley Holiday Reserve—keeping “holiday” to signal the core product to guests, while “Reserve” repositions the campground as a place that respects and protects nature. Together, the name becomes a commitment: a holiday, rich in nature.

Building an identity a Sanctuary wouldn't mind sharing a fence with

With the name settled, we built out the full identity:

Brand and logo — a confident wordmark paired with a stylised kākāriki karaka in flight, New Zealand’s rarest parakeet and a thriving resident of the Sanctuary, chosen as a symbol of the transformation underway.

Colour — a palette led by deep forest green and a bright, energetic chartreuse, drawn from the kākāriki karaka’s own feathers, alongside a supporting Kawakawa leaf graphic—a traditional Māori medicinal plant whose imperfect, hole-marked leaves became an apt metaphor for a park with rough edges but a rich experience underneath.

Wayfinding and signage — a full system spanning entrance and welcome signage, intersection and directional signs, totems, vehicle wayfinding and site mapping, all designed to guide guests confidently between the campground and the Sanctuary.

Mural direction — large-scale murals featuring the kākāriki karaka and native leaf motifs, turning tired buildings into some of the site’s most photographed features.

The results

What was once a disconnected, aging campground now shares a clear visual and strategic thread with the Sanctuary it calls home—a place with its own name, its own story, and a brand built to grow into it.