GreenUP will soon invite children to help shape the future of outdoor play at Ecology Park after receiving funding to reimagine the park’s Children’s Garden.
The project, supported by the Community Foundation of Greater Peterborough through the Community Foundations of Canada Free to Play initiative, promotes child-led outdoor play and aims to enhance opportunities for children to explore, build, and imagine in nature.
The enhancements will build on decades of outdoor education at Ecology Park, where generations of children have explored forests, ponds, gardens, and streams through camps and school programs.
For many families in the region, Ecology Park has been a place where outdoor childhood memories are made.
Adults who attended a camp or school program at the park in younger years have begun to return with their children so they too can play in the willow tunnel, discover frogs in the pond, taste vegetables directly from the garden, explore the nature playscape, and experience the excitement of finding something unexpected under every log and leaf.
“The stations provided such an awesome opportunity for us to come together and play imaginary games,” says Maisie, former Earth Adventures camper and current counselor at Camp Kawartha. “They helped us grow our friendships and community.”
GreenUP’s Earth Adventures camp operates over eight weeks each summer and welcomes children ages five to eight for a full week of discovery, creativity, and exploration.
Campers investigate the diversity of habitats found within Ecology Park including forest and meadow areas, demonstration gardens, the frog pond, a mature perennial flower garden, and Mead Creek, the picturesque stream that loops from Little Lake.
Each week at camp features a new nature-based theme encouraging children to explore everything from insects and wildlife to food gardens and trees through hands-on activities and unstructured play.
These opportunities have never been more important. Researchers and educators are raising concerns about declining opportunities for outdoor play.
According to a recent 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.
In addition to summer camp, Ecology Park welcomes school groups throughout the spring and fall for curriculum-connected outdoor learning experiences. Within this program, students learn about nature by investigating it firsthand.
Whether exploring concepts of soils and compost, insects and habitats, or fossils and rocks, children engage with the themes through observation and play. Programs can even be tailored to meet the unique learning goals of individual classrooms.
Ecology Park’s five-acre site has undergone many changes in recent years. Nearly a decade ago, GreenUP’s community came together to fund the construction of a children’s education shelter, which expanded opportunities to deliver high-quality outdoor programming.
In 2020, additional support enabled the creation of accessible pathways, a barrier-free washroom, and stronger connections to the Trans Canada Trail, while 2023 fundraising efforts resulted in the building of a natural playscape.
Despite these additions, recent visitors have missed other engaging offerings that once made Ecology Park an even more exciting and educational place for families.
Many of the former Children’s Garden’s interactive activity centres, games, and animal costumes — which taught children how different insects eat, how compost builds soil, and how wildlife survives in the garden and the forest — have worn down due to use and exposure to the elements.
Thanks to the Free to Play funding, GreenUP has begun reimagining the Children’s Garden at Ecology Park to encourage self-guided play in the hope that new offerings will allow even more children to build, imagine, invent, and collaborate in new ways at the park.
The next step will be to ask the community for donations to support project implementation, while children will be engaged to help co-design the space.
With approximately 6,000 visitors to Ecology Park every year, learning opportunities benefit children and families beyond GreenUP’s programming. Being a public space, the Children’s Garden is enjoyed by all, whether engaged in camp or a school trip or simply stopping by.
As children’s schedules become increasingly structured and screen time continues to rise, it is more important than ever to provide opportunities for children to experience the kind of self-guided exploration that builds confidence, creativity, resilience, physical literacy, and a lifelong connection to nature.
Some of the most valuable learning happens outside of the classroom — while balancing across a log, building something unexpected with sticks and stones, or simply following curiosity, wherever it leads.
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.”
Save the date: GreenUP will host a Family Night at Ecology Park on Thursday, August 27. All are welcome.
