What did Barangaroo Point look like when Barangaroo, the Cammeraygal woman it is named for, lived in Sydney? This is the question at the heart of the city's big new park, which opens this winter.

There's no going back – the original geography of the point known to Barangaroo and her people in the late 1700s was irrevocably changed in 1836 when the headland was cut away to make wharves. Instead the landscape architects, led by Sydney's Peter Walker, are delivering a park that references Sydney's pre-European landscape, within the constraints of a modern space atop a 300-space car park and a cultural centre.

Under construction: The new park at Barangaroo is due to open in winter 2015. Credit:Robin Powell

The car park provided the stone – some 37,000 cubic metres, cut into 10,000 blocks – that dominates the site. On the headland the stone is arranged to form a rocky cliff. Around the corner the stone links the old sea wall to a new cove where the stepped blocks create the right conditions to allow sea grasses and molluscs to thrive. On land, the sandstone is like scattered seating, each rough-topped stone skirted with untrimmed grass to give it a sense of having weathered there. Behind this stone-littered shore is the "bush", a series of terraces naturalistically planted with species indigenous to the Sydney harbour foreshore.

Stuart Pittendrigh, horticultural consultant on the project, showed me around and enthusiastically explained some of its horticultural firsts. Research identified 83 species at home on Sydney's shore before European arrival. Four interlopers were added to the list: gymea lily, spotted gum, Sydney blue gum and water gum – all plants from the wider Sydney region. Then, in a new approach to landscape planting, each plant was investigated to discover the topography, aspect, soil and drainage in which it thrives. These optimum growing conditions were mapped on a spreadsheet, revealing communities of like-minded plants. Ideal conditions were then created for those communities, dramatically reducing plant losses.