Entries by Landartista

It’s big, It’s blue, and it looks incredibly fun

Folks at Imagination Playground and KaBoom have developed a new set of tools for the creative youngster on the playground. The bright blue, soft, water proof pieces give kids a chance to move, and create in endless ways.This is not quite nature based, but it is fun and stimulates creativity and cooperation. KaBoom calls it […]

Marylhurst Early Childhood Center Upgrades Playground

The Marylhurst Early Childhood Center in Oregon City has been working with GreenWorks Landscape Architecture to develop a master plan for a learning garden and nature based playground. We helped the school define their needs and developed two site design options that were combined into a preferred site master plan. Some projects have a lot […]

Hood River School District – School Upgrades

This diagram demonstrates the cyclical resource flows at the new LEED rated Hood River Middle School science and music addition         In response to a successful bond measure the Hood River School District has been upgrading, renovating and building additions to their elementary, middle and high schools. GreenWorks helped retrofit existing sites […]

Safety, Historic Playgrounds, and Moving Forward

I recently took the Playground Safety Inspectors Course from the National Playground Safety Institute. I now see why we have so many similar playground everywhere! The safety standards are daunting. I have been trudging through  the thick ASTM and Consumer Product Safety Codes and applying them to natural play. It looks like I am not […]

M. Paul Friedberg on Playgrounds

Well, I am officially a landscape architect. After 8 years of practice, 5 massive licensing tests and a final oral interview I am in! To celebrate I have a post that links back to the Cultural Landscape Foundation. They have some great short movies from some well known landscape architects. M. Paul Friedberg caught my […]

Woodland Adventure at the Minnesota Zoo

Wow! This looks like a fun place to play. The Minnesota Zoo has added an animal themed play area with lots of custom play pieces to mimic natural habitats. One of their goals is to increase kids connection to nature. I tend to support less equipment based play areas, but understand how the heavy traffic, […]

School Garden Tour

I recently had the opportunity to go on a school garden tour sponsored by the local OSU extension office 4-H. Their 4-H wildlife stewards program offers training to Oregon educators and volunteers on the creation of school gardens and green school updates. We visited five schools in the Portland Oregon area with a nice variety […]

Minnesota Landscape Arboretum

This whimsical garden is sure to get the young and young at heart excited. While on a search for arboretum based nature play I found this site in Minnesota. There are not a lot of photos on their website of the children’s areas. The spaces include mostly natural wood structures including a puppet stage, small […]

SCRAP STORE PLAY POD

This is a pretty amazing idea for creative play; inexpensive, with limit less possibilities. The ‘pod’ could be installed in any school playground and unlocked during play times. Inside the pod is a variety of building materials and scrap pieces of other elements. I could see this working well in Portland area schools. Working closely […]

OPRA NATURAL PLAY AREAS WORKSHOP

Michelle Mathis of GreenWorks will be presenting at the ORPA and OPRD workshop on Natural Play Areas.  The workshop will be held on March 31, 2010 at Silver Falls State Park. Workshop DescriptionOregon Parks and Recreation Department (OPRD) aims to create a participatory design process that will serve as a template of how to design […]

NATURE BASED PLAYGROUND TOUR

GreenWorks organized and led a Nature Based Play Tour early this year. We had an increasing number of clients, peers and local agencies that were showing an interest in natural play options. Many of these agencies are still working through questions like; how nature play works, what makes something nature play, and what are the […]