The Best Backyard in the World

by Leslie McGuire, managing editor

The Acorn is not only a climbing, hiding and snooping activity, it models a seed and the child can become the sprout. The pattern in the surfacing is that of a forest floor littered with fallen oak leaves.

The Morton Arboretum’s new Children’s Garden is four acres designed to spark children’s curiosity about the natural world in what might as well be a space just as safe as their own backyards. It combines different experiences that challenge physical, cognitive, and emotional development in delightful ways while teaching all about natural systems.

Some of the highlights include Backyard Discover Gardens with larger-than-life roots and acorns, as well as an elaborate water garden; Adventure Woods where they can explore trees, native grasses, model wetlands and a secret stream; Tree Finder Grove where a one-ton, movable granite ball is suspended on jets of water as part of a tree “matching” game; a “Kids’ Tree Walk” where each sidewalk is named after a tree and labeled with leaf patterns of that tree pressed into the concrete.

Little visitors are able to scale up to a canopy and follow stepping stones through a pond, discover the world of plants, tend a garden or just have a fun adventure among more than 2,300 trees and shrubs, nearly 8,500 perennials, more than 6,000 groundcovers, nearly 4,600 spring bulbs, and 700 aquatic plants. In addition, there are all kinds of animals—rabbits, squirrels, a family of mallards with ducklings and even a skunk who visited for awhile leaving his footprints in the wet pavement.

The pond’s wetland area is the most popular section, and Schaal is sure it’s because of the sheer amount of life that’s intrinsic to the place—frogs, salamanders, fish, dragonflies, insects, butterflies—you name it.

Part of the 82-year-old Morton Arboretum, an internationally recognized 1,700-acre outdoor museum, the larger park contains collections of more than 3,700 kinds of trees, shrubs, and other plants from around the world. The Children’s Garden, which promises to be the premier children’s garden among public gardens in the country, will encourage curiosity and exploration in a beautiful outdoor setting with places to dig, animals, opportunities to water and care for plants, plants that appeal to children for many reasons (food source, sensory interest, beauty, strange shapes, etc.), and things to learn.

It took Herb Schaal of EDAW Fort Collins, and a Landscape Architect with over 30 years of experience in a broad range of applications of the profession, six years to design and create the garden, based on input from a world class team of exhibit developers, botanists, educators and horticulturists who brought together their collective expertise in the area of children’s outdoor experiences.

The key to a great children’s garden is to let children have a hands-on, real life experience that includes dirt, worms, leaves, water, plants and insects. In the first month the Morton Arboretum Children’s Garden was open, family membership increased by 1000. Morton Arboretum memberships increased by three to four thousand in the fall after the opening, and even during the winter, there are hundreds of visitors each day.

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The terrain was initially supposed to be left as it was, however Herb Schaal wouldn’t accept it that way. They reshaped the land to make it useful for it’s stated purpose by creating a bowl shaped area. The construction documents and the actual construction was done by Bill Inman and Eric Hornig of The Hitchcock Group. The bottom of the bowl is where the more intensive gardens are. Those are the Backyard Discovery gardens. The upper portion of the terrace is the adventure area. That’s where they located the stream, the tree deck, and the wonder pond and meadow—showcasing the more natural aspects of the garden.

The stream is approximately 200 feet long, and is bordered by natural landscaping and plants. There are places where children can get to the water easily on stepping stones. “It was quite a challenge to figure out how to make a natural stream accessible without compaction or destroying plant life,” says Schaal. A portion of the pond is a wetland that children can explore by walking right in the pond. The pond itself is filled up with gravel—three feet of it. The plants get three feet of water, but the children are only in two inches of water and therefore safe. Stepping stones are also set in the gravel so children can cross the pond.

The little structure at the high point of the cedar deck walk is a custom design that takes on the form of the spruce boughs. The roof sections come off the central post at the same angle as the branches and boughs come off the spruce trees—an elucidation of the Fibonacci Principle.

The Kid’s Tree Walk is a tree-lined walkway that presents the rich beauty and diversity of trees. Each sidewalk is named after a tree and labeled with leaf patterns of that tree pressed into the concrete. A team of volunteers pressed 3,500 leaves to create this tree walkway.

At the heart of the garden is Tree Finder Grove, with its one-ton, movable granite ball suspended on high-pressure jets of water. The circular pavement design surrounding the ball is divided into 16 wedges each containing one of 16 tree species from the ball, with a picture of its leaf, a picture of its branch, its common name, and its Latin name. The 16 trees in Tree Finder Grove range from Sugar Maple to American Elm. All of the trees represented here grow in the region and are native to North America, except for the Gingko. The leaves were chosen because of their interesting leaf shape or significance to the Arboretum.

Rope bridges connect the play areas. One is connected to the elevated deck around 75 year old spruce trees. The rope bridge suspends children up among the boughs. Another deck has tree houses connected by rope bridges up in red bud trees. In spring there are big dark red flowers and kids can see the blooming red bud flowers up close.

Organized into three distinct areas, The Backyard Discovery Gardens, the Adventure Woods and the Central Plaza which links the other two areas, is a corridor of tree diversity and open space for visitors to congregate and picnic. This portal to adventure and a greater understanding of trees and nature will also encourage children to explore outside the Children’s Garden. Specially trained guides will help prepare children and their families to make further discoveries in the Arboretum and its 1,700-acre oasis of trees.

According to Schaal this is the largest and most ambitious children’s garden in the world. Located inside 1700 acres of forest and woodland, initially the team thought they’d have acres of large trees to work with. However, when they started the planning process, they were given just a piece of grass on a slope. Luckily, there were larches and red buds on edges of the piece of land. In order to use the existing trees as a learning experience, they had to draw the garden out to the edges. Ultimately, they ended up with four acres.

The gardening area is where children can plant, water, cultivate, weed and harvest. There are little houses for tools and a potting shed. There are watering cans and a hand pump for water so children can water plants. However, they found that children don’t like to carry the watering cans too far, so the plants nearest the pump got thoroughly overwatered and the plants farthest away got hardly any water at all.

The Morton Arboretum started out with the idea that to have a great garden they had to have a great process. They spent over a year deciding what it should be prior to starting the design. They set up facilitated meetings with large groups of people that could brainstorm, including the National Science Foundation, large children’s museums and the Exploratorium in San Francisco. “We did a tour of the best children’s facilities in the country to see what we could learn from them,” said Schaal, “including the New York Botanic Garden. We had to integrate all that input in a synergistic way so the project wasn’t just a bunch of pieces, but an entirety that had its own integrity.”

They took advantage of the sloping terrain so visitors enter the deck at ground level and the deck only rises slightly as the ground beneath it slopes down. Therefore it’s possible to get 14 feet up with just a very gentle ramp that makes the tree tops easily accessible.

Research shows that positive early experiences in nature foster a lifelong appreciation and respect for living things. Introducing children to the wonders of nature is essential to developing future generations of good environmental stewards.

The Morton Arboretum is also responding to the concerns of many educators that children have increasingly limited opportunities to interact with the natural world.

This giant root sculpture (seen here under construction) is one that kids can climb under and through. A ladder leads them back up to the surface where a bloodgood sycamore is planted above the deck, and the kids can make the connection and get to see how the roots are structured—something no one ever gets to see. Two of the roots are a slide, so they can climb up, and slide down.

Even more challenging, the design had to be authentic and real. No one wanted a fake tree that recreates the real thing with synthetic materials. However, the challenge was the thousands of hands that would be all over the “exhibits.” Natural living materials don’t hold up very well under that amount of appreciation. Outside there’s an opportunity for children to experience first hand and in a very hands-on sort of way, a quite different real life experience that includes dirt, worms, leaves, water, plants and insects. That’s what is at the core of this garden. “We wanted to get them in touch with real nature, not a vicarious experience through TV or a bunch of plastic images,” says Schaal. “Part of the original design was to include a net climber which would be a foot to two feet off the ground so kids could view the earth without trampling it. However, it didn’t get done the way we‘d envisioned it. The idea was for kids to be like spiders climbing over the prairie. They could look down and see the living grasses and inhabitants without destroying it.” For safety reasons, the installer convinced the client that the exhibit needed a safety surface in case a child fell through—even though the surface was grass. Ultimately it became more of a play environment. But the idea is one they’ll use again and use a smaller net so the possibility of going through is not an issue.

A very clever design solution was found making the pond an activity area. Even though the water is actually three feet deep (which is a requirement of some of the wetland plants), they filled it with gravel so the surface that children walk on is only two inches deep, therefore safe.

There are two cedar deck systems—one for the larches and one for the spruce trees. The deck for the large trees gets you up into branch structure while protecting the roots. In the spruce grove, the idea was to get high into the canopy. Strategically placed “Information Stations” help children understand what kind of life goes on up in the trees.

This children’s garden gets kids back to the kinds of experiences they have in a real environment. Even in winter when it’s cold or snowy, the children are still engaged.

“They see animal tracks, bird tracks, cones on trees and seeds in the fruit, and long shadows from winter sun,” says Schaal. “They can make snow angels, sculptures, throw it, stomp around and make tracks, or shake snow out of the tree branches down onto their siblings.”

The park staff maintains the many activity stations and resource chests, making sure there’s always a supply of suet and seeds for bird feeders, wood for building bird houses, or leaves to make prints. Staff members decide what tools to include. Sometimes the chests are just used for convenient storage for classes or activities. The resource chests are all different.

The child opens it up, gets a surprise then moves on. In the Curiosity Garden sensory items are placed in the chests such as lavender and rough bark. Under the trees, there’s a parabolic mirror so children look down to see up. There are nine resource chests and each helps interpret the spot.

For the start up design they’d requested $7 million for the construction budget. The overall project budget was around $10 1/2 million, which is the most anyone has spent on a children’s garden by a long shot. Most range from one half to five million dollars.

There are five flower models that are large metal sculptures. Each flower is a different shape and teaches the morphology of flowers by showing kids the attractive part of the plant. The pansy has a xylophone, the tulip shape has a horn, the bell shaped flower has a bell, the rose has a stamen that clinks and the sunflower has flippable tiles to change the pattern. The point is that when children interact they’re behaving like bees or other pollinators such as humming birds.

Another interesting observation that came out of the year-long discovery process was that a lot of urban and suburban children are afraid of nature. It’s best to introduce them through exposure to a familiar urban environment. Children can enter into and enjoy an environment that is not much different from a great backyard. Then they move on into the arboretum, and after awhile they can transition to the big wide world though this gradual process.

“One other really important part of what we did differently was the creation of an activity matrix,” says Schaal. “The matrix was a response to this year long discovery process. The project manager of the Morton Arboretum, Bill Carvell, was heavily into education. He kept asking every time a physical idea came up—i.e., a tree house, root house, stream—‘What are they going to do there?’ That was the big question. ‘So we build it,’ he would say, ‘but unless I know that the experience is worthwhile, why bother.’”

Schaal and his team have probably designed 10 more gardens since and they keep improving on the activity matrix. The most recent additions consider what the parents are doing as well. By adding the parents into the experience, they’ve created even more aspects to the design. The path system is one consideration which also makes this a more interesting experience for adults. Adults get bench bound because there’s usually nothing else to do. Here the path system allows them to stroll for an hour and see new things and new vantage points. Then parents can sit in different places and watch their children as they explore.

“We wanted to get children in touch with real nature, not a vicarious experience through Television or a bunch of plastic images.”—Herb Schaal, Principle and Vice President, EDAW Fort Collins

The Morton Arboretum Children’s Garden has turned out to be more successful than anyone’s wildest dreams. It has changed the demographics of the visitors. They now have younger parents and families who would have chosen the zoo, but now go to Botanic Gardens. In the first month, family membership increased by 1000. Morton Arboretum memberships increased by three to four thousand in the fall after the opening. And even during the winter, there are hundreds of visitors each day. On December 27th of 2005, 935 visitors spent the day there. Obviously, although a great deal of money was spent, there are going to be a great many dividends, and just like the ancient saying, “If you give a gift with love, it will be returned to you one hundred times.” In this case, it will probably be probably more like a thousand times.

The Activity Matrix

The question was—as it should be—“What will the children learn and what are they supposed to do here?” So, in order to make sure that there is always something for children to do at each area of the park, and always something for them to learn, Herb Schaal and the EDAW team decided to create an Activity Matrix.

Lift Flap Sunflower: Senses: eye, hand; Intelligences: kinesthetic, logical/mathematical, interpersonal; Activity/Experience: lift flaps and change petal patterns.

Telescope: Senses: eye,hand; Intelligences: spatial, kinesthetic, natural, interpersonal; Activity/Experience: Finding nests, squirrels, birds.

The result, and it was a very effective one, was that the matrix describes both the learning experience and what the activity will be for every element of the children’s garden. To have a rich experience it has to be hands-on and engage the five senses. However, it should also engage several of the seven intelligences that Harvard professor Howard Gardner describes.

Musical Flower: Senses: eye, hand, ear; Intelligences: kinesthetic, spatial, musical, interpersonal; Activity/Experience: Learning about insects and pollination.

According to Gardner, there are zones in the brain and each one of the concomitant seven intelligences has its own quality: Linguistic, Logical/Mathematical,Musical,Bodily/ Kinesthetic, Spatial, Interpersonal and Intrapersonal. For every aspect of the garden, there was a checklist.

Stream/Wetland: Senses: eye, hand, foot ear; Intelligences: kinesthetic, natural, intrapersonal, interpersonal; Activity/Experience: Digging, discovering frogs.

“The challenge was the thousands of little hands that would be all over the exhibits. Natural living materials don’t hold up very well under that amount of appreciation.”

Hand Pump: Senses: hand, eye, ear; Intelligences: kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal; Activity/ Experience: How hydraulic pumps function and operate.

As they went through the garden, the team checked which body parts and intelligence zones were being engaged, and which stations engaged which senses. Some parts engaged feet, hands, whole body, musical and ear. Others engaged nose and eyes. They tried to design the entire project to engage as many of the senses as possible and use as many parts of the body as possible, and that’s what makes this garden so extraordinary.

Rolling Ball: Senses: eye, hand; Intelligences: spatial, natural, intrapersonal, interpersonal; Activity/Experience: Identifying and matching leaves and trees.

Frog Pond: Senses: eye, foot; Intelligences: kinesthetic, intrapersonal, interpersonal; Activity/Experience: Using foot to activate spitting frog.

Acorns: Senses: hands, feet, eyes; Intelligences: kinesthetic, spatial, intrapersonal; Activity/Experience: Learning about and mimicking how seeds become seedlings.