By Chèye Roberson
Sentinel Correspondent
Audubon Greenwich unveiled its new interactive Nature Play Trail last Saturday. Nearly 200 adults and children joined board members and staff in exploring the trail, which makes use of the natural environment to engage children of all ages in imaginative and educational activities.
“They gain a multi-sensory sense of nature and experience learning in a wide variety of ways,” said Michelle Frankel, the Audubon Greenwich Center director.
There are six activity stations along the trail, including a sensory garden, a toddler circle, a little kids’ climbing area, a rain garden, a hand-pump and water play station, a flowing creek and pond, and a discovery area for bigger kids. The Nature Play Trail is wheelchair and stroller accessible.
In the toddler circle area, children built houses with carefully placed sticks and twigs. As they built, they looked at pictures of animals building their homes out of same materials they were using.
In another area, there were tree stumps with tic-tac-toe boards painted on them. Kids used rocks painted as bumble bees and ladybugs as game pieces.
Kids had the choice of walking or taking a big slide built into the side of the hill down to the area with a log tunnel in the center. Many enjoyed climbing through the tunnel over and over again. Another fan favorite of the day was the amadinda, a large wooden African xylophone to which the toddlers especially gravitated.
After the xylophone, the children followed the trail to the flowing creek, also built into the hillside. The creek has a wooden bridge built over it and a stack of water pails for playing in the water.
Chrissi Lombardi, a neighbor of Audubon Greenwich who brought her husband and soon to be three-year-old son with her, said the trail had her son at “water.”
“It’s great. He loves anything with water—and he really liked the log,” said Lombardi.
In the center of the trail was a rain garden, which captures rainwater from the main building and gathers it to nurture a group of native plants.
An art class at Carmel Academy created decorative mosaic stepping stones to accent the pollinating garden, which provides food for bees, hummingbirds, and butterflies.
The trail will include a brochure that explains its features for a self-guided experience.
Along with being a safe place for children, the trail is meant to be a place where native birds, plants, and insects such as butterflies can thrive.
“We envision the Nature Play Trail as a kind of gateway experience that will inspire children to have more immersive nature experiences as they grow,” said Frankel. “The trail is also being designed with birds in mind, landscaped with native plants that will provide much-needed food for migrating birds as they stop to rest and refuel along their journey.”
The hillside was formerly overrun by non-native invasive plants, including bamboo. An abundance of non-native plant life limits the amount of healthy food for the native wildlife of the area.
The Nature Play Trail is the first section of a one-mile universal access trail, which will premiere its added wheelchair accessibility during Audubon Greenwich’s Fall Festival and Hawk Watch, to be held Sept. 17-18.
The universal access trail was funded by Wheels in the Woods and was crafted by Fairfield House and Garden. Conte and Conte, Inc. contributed to the bird-friendly design, and the Nature Play elements were funded by members of Audubon Greenwich’s board of directors.
