Spring always brings a sense of renewal. The snow melts (finally!), the soil warms, and the first green shoots begin to emerge across the local landscape.
This spring, another renewal process is taking shape at GreenUP Ecology Park — one that engages the community to help reimagine The Children’s Garden and bring more children and families into this nature space.
Ecology Park, a five-acre urban oasis on Ashburnham Drive, is currently home to demonstration gardens, a natural playscape, and a native plant nursery, which invite people of all ages to learn about and connect with the land.
Now more than ever, opportunities such as these this are critical — particularly for children, who today spend more of their free time in structured indoor activities or on screens and far less child-led active time exploring the outdoors than any generation before them.
According to the ParticipACTION Report Card on Physical Activity for Children & Youth, only 22 per cent of children and youth five to 17 years of age accumulated more than two hours per day of total time engaged in any unstructured play, whether indoors or outdoors.
Their key recommendation is that “Outdoor and nature-based play opportunities should be promoted and supported, not only given their association with increased physical activity levels and improved mental health outcomes, but also because they promote children’s planetary connection and environmental stewardship.”
AOP10, a collective of international organizations in the outdoor play sector, have also issued a call to action with recommendations for communities as part of the 2025 Position Statement on Active Outdoor Play. They include “Support, promote, and build on efforts that promote benefit-risk approaches to active outdoor play” and “Encourage intergenerational active outdoor play to strengthen community connections.”
If communities don’t answer these calls, this generation of children — as they inherit the climate crisis — will remain disconnected from plants, waterways, and wildlife, making it more difficult for them to love, protect, and feel safe in nature, let alone become champions for nature and climate action.
Fortunately in Peterborough, GreenUP is working toward one solution: Ecology Park. While landscape program staff work to rewild park spaces and enhance GreenUP’s demonstration gardens, the education program team is focused on what activity centres, loose parts, or experiences could engage and inspire a new generation of nature lovers.
Community members with teenaged and adult children might remember previous iterations of The Children’s Garden at Ecology Park.
Hands-on activities, games, and animal costumes pulled families back to the park again and again to play in nature. Kids learned how different insects eat, how compost builds soil, and how wildlife survives in the garden and the forest.
Outdoor elements (and lots of use) eventually wore these activity centres down, and though GreenUP installed a wonderful natural playscape in 2023, recent visitors have missed other engaging offerings that once made Ecology Park an even more exciting and educational place for families.
These offerings included an annual end-of summer family night event where Glen Caradus, the Paddling Puppeteer and former GreenUP staff member, would lead children on a lantern walk through dusky trails, to finish the evening off with fun facts about nocturnal creatures. Memorable moments like these help to shape a child’s early connection to nature, and to community.
To bring elements like these back, and elevate Ecology Park as a vibrant local destination for families, GreenUP is asking the community to donate toward a spring fundraising goal of $25,000, which will go a long way toward bringing back some of the fun.
For anyone who has ever walked the trails, attended a program, or simply enjoyed a quiet moment at Ecology Park, this is a great time to consider making a gift to support this project and Ecology Park’s future.
As a registered charity, GreenUP relies on donations from individuals who believe in building a greener, healthier future for Peterborough.
Help GreenUP enhance Ecology Park as a local environmental education destination. Visit greenup.on.ca/donate-now/ and direct your donation to “Climate Action and Education Programs.”
Curious about what else GreenUP is working on? The public is invited to GreenUP’s Earth Day Open House Wednesday, April 22 at the 378 Aylmer Street location from 4 to 6 p.m. Connect with the team and learn more about:
- Energy programs that help reduce costs for homes and businesses
- Landscape programs that offer climate and stormwater solutions
- Education programs that transform a child’s relationship with nature
- Active transportation programs that support commuting and the trip to school
- Volunteer programs: bringing people together to take local action
- What’s growing at Ecology Park’s Native Plant Nursery
- How to support GreenUP’s work.
