Lake Katherine Nature Center and Botanic Gardens in Palos Heights is boosting its options for unstructured play for children just in time for summer.
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Operations manager Gareth Blakesley said a master site plan begun in 2012 included working on the Children’s Forest with an eye to “reinventing” the area. Children had planted trees at the 500-square-foot site in 1993, he said, and in 2014 Lake Katherine replaced many of the dead ash trees with 30 young oak and hickory trees.
Still, more was needed in order “to encourage children to be outside and active,” Blakesley said. “The master site plan dictated that we need to make this a more children-friendly area. … more things for them to actually do in this area (and) a place for them to discover things. We wanted to bring children back to the site.”
He said the park will use much of a $15,000 KaBOOM! Let’s Play grant and $10,000 of community donations for the kid-friendly equipment.
“That was very exciting for us because the play equipment you can get nowadays looks natural,” Blakesley said.
He said the site is scheduled to be ready for action by the end of June. It will include a man-made 5-foot-high rock for children to climb, a log balance beam and a log tunnel positioned on 9-inch-deep impact-easing mulch.
“It doesn’t take away from the feel of the place,” Blakesley said. “It’s still active play outside and unstructured, which is very, very important nowadays when people have been inside more.”
Blakesley said with so much of life being “scheduled” for both children and adults, the children’s play area will allow families to forget about time and enjoy nature.
“Parents want a place (like this) to take their children,” he said.
Native plants and trees will continue to be planted at the site, a policy Lake Katherine maintains on all 85 acres, he said.
“Everything we do … if we make improvements to the grounds, we try to put native plants in the ground,” he said.
The play area also will include a fort-like structure made from the wood of dead ash trees from the Children’s Forest and a fire ring around which families can sit and enjoy a campfire.
“We’re actually hoping to get an Eagle Scout to redo our fire ring,” Blakesley said.
Blakesley said the unstructured play in a natural environment offers a number of benefits for children, such as increasing cognitive ability, encouraging creativity and creating a sense of well-being.
“It’s got lots of things going for it,” Blakesley said.
Lake Katherine uses print and social media to announce new projects and the many programs the park has to offer, Blakesley said, and he is confident that the 6,000 children who visit Lake Katherine each year will get the word out.
“I know for certain if they see it, they will want to come back,” he said.
Lake Katherine Nature Center and Botanic Gardens, 7402 W. Lake Katherine Drive, is a nonprofit that includes woodlands, prairie, wetlands, gardens and a 10-acre lake.
For more information, visit http://www.lakekatherine.org or call (708) 361-1873.
Brashinger is a freelance reporter.
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