More than 250 people of all ages attended GreenUP Ecology Park’s Family Night celebration on Thursday, August 27.
The evening brought community members together for the first Family Night event since 2019.
Faces were painted with bees and butterflies while families enjoyed a catered meal of sandwiches, picnic sides, fruits, and vegetables under the education shelter. Groups sitting at the picnic tables looked on as kids in the grassy clearing below turned soap solution into giant bubbles, waving oversized bubble wands above their heads.
In addition to food, face painting, and live entertainment, several pop-up outdoor nature-based play stations were set up, intended to help GreenUP gauge the interest and engagement level of visitors.
Children gathered at the Water Wall, where they created different configurations of bottles, tubes, troughs, and hoses to direct streams in fun and novel ways. Nearby, kids discovered the joy of getting dirty as they dug with trowels and climbed around a huge mound of muddy topsoil in the Mud Pit.
While some kids climbed, jumped and balanced on Ecology Park’s natural playscape, others explored the Loose Parts station in the cedar maze or experimented with sound at the makeshift Music Wall.
These activities were offered as part of a participatory design process to help inform potential new permanent activity centres for family fun and environmental education opportunities available to the public in Ecology Park.
“I’m fairly new to the area but my sister has lived here for about 20 years,” local mom and artist Robin LeClerc said as her kids played nearby. This was her first time visiting Ecology Park, and she described her surprise at seeing how packed the greenspace was for Family Night.
“There’s lots here for the kids to enjoy and for the big kids like us who never want to grow up,” she laughed. “We love the nature, art, food, and community here … seems like every time I turn around the corner there’s something new, like the nursery, the composting; just lots to learn and see.”
Jonathan Armstrong, GreenUP’s Ecology Park program coordinator, led a tree tour around the five-acre greenspace.
He paused to teach the group how to determine the age of a pine tree and described the ecological importance of White Oaks and Butternut trees, handing out small nuts for kids to touch and smell.
He ended the tour by explaining GreenUP’s plans to plant a dense Little Forest at the heart of the park this fall, showcasing how even small parcels of land can be renaturalized to provide habitats for all kinds of little animals, birds, and insects.
Following the tree tour, families gathered to watch an educational puppet show performance by Glen Caradus, the Paddling Puppeteer.
He started with a song teaching children how to say a few words in Anishinaabemowin, then presented his new musical show, Call of the Garden, in which a puppet version of Caradus decides to transform a vacant parkette into a community garden and gets advice from various animals in the “Neighbourwood.”
With some help from the audience, the fictional community garden took shape while they welcomed a real-life surprise: a baby red squirrel jumped down from a nearby tree right onto Caradus’ head, then investigated his instrument and the puppet show backdrop before scampering back into the forest.
As the sun sunk lower behind the tree canopy, children decorated lanterns with paint and colourful tissue paper in preparation for GreenUP’s summer send-off tradition: a lantern-lit walk along Ecology Park’s forest trails.
Caradus led the procession, dressed as his superhero alter-ego, Cool Captain Climate.
Families were slow to leave after the walk, as children continued to play and parents mingled and laughed.
GreenUP is already looking forward to inviting the community back for next year’s Family Night celebration.
While this year’s event was funded in part by Community Foundation Canada’s Free to Play grant through the Community Foundation of Greater Peterborough, GreenUP is seeking donations to support the implementation of permanent outdoor activity centres, reinvigorating the park as an outdoor environmental education destination.
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.
Help GreenUP reinvigorate Ecology Park as an environmental education destination. Donate at greenup.on.ca/donate-now/.
