The recent transformation of Lewisburg's Hufnagle Park set out to accomplish several vital objectives, including flood mitigation, enhanced aesthetics, and diversified recreation options for children—improvements that spur safety, beauty, and economic activity. Perhaps the most progressive achievement, however, is the implementation of a nature playground offering children opportunities to spend time doing what early childhood experts say is an essential component of a healthy childhood—freeform engagement with nature.
Susan Chlebowski, an AMS Certified Montessori Teacher and Certified Nature Based Educator, served as a volunteer consultant for the nature play area in Hufnagle Park. She facilitated community engagement through charettes—intense periods of planning activity with stakeholders, including Bucknell University students, faculty and administration, and Lewisburg community members—held multiple times over a span of several years.
“One of my goals was to explain the benefits of a nature play area versus a more traditional fixed structure playground,” said Chlebowski. “Both have great benefits to children, but when we see what Lewisburg has created through this Bull Run Greenway Project, and the nature playground, it’s really the best of both worlds. Now all families have a way to engage in nature in a very safe way as part of a public park.”
It all adds up
A variety of components combine to create desirable nature play areas, said Chlebowski, many of which are inherent in an outdoor setting.
“Soothing colors, like blue sky, white clouds and green grass and trees, are provided by nature,” she explained. “We also include wildlife—ducks, butterflies, even insects living under rocks—to engage natural curiosity. Anything in nature is available for children to observe and get curious about.”
A sense of adventure, also central to a successful nature play area, arises from opportunities to interact with natural materials, whether it is a log carved with notched steps to facilitate climbing, a log for sliding down, or large rocks strategically positioned throughout the stream to challenge children and adults to navigate them. Loose parts, including rocks, stumps, sticks, and branches, are valuable props for imaginative play.
The park setting, added Chlebowski, invites adults to go along with children and share in those discoveries, an important component to the experience, as is evidenced by the quote inscribed on the sign posted at the entry to the nature play area:
“If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in.” --Rachel Carson
A vision realized
The vision for Hufnagle Park’s transformation included input from Lewisburg Children’s Museum staff and parents around the idea: How do you want your children to play? What’s important? What are they not getting elsewhere?
“People wanted to get down to the water,” said Kim Wheeler, executive director of SEDA-COG, planning facilitator for the Bull Run Greenway project, which includes the transformation of Hufnagle Park. “They wanted more integrated play with nature rather than just plastic and metal. They wanted to see their children really explore, beyond what they can do on a piece of plastic equipment. They wanted to see kids be able to move things around and change the landscape a bit, which has been accomplished with the logs, rocks, and sticks.”
Community input was filtered through the lens of landscape architect Brian Auman’s goal to create a master plan that underscored community engagement and connection. Within this plan, Bull Run stream evolved from a flood hazard to a natural play area infused with water and wildlife, where children (and adults) can don water shoes and wade through a tamed stream, flowing amid 36 types of native grasses and wildflowers, lined by dirt paths leading visitors safely down to the water’s edge.
Auman also sought to educate children about where their food comes from by including in his plan an edible garden, or what he calls a food forest. Strawberry plants, blueberry bushes, and paw paw trees are accessible for picking and eating.
“Through my work, I really do try to connect people with nature in a meaningful way,” said Auman, whose landscape design firm, BSA Landplan, has created master plans for parks, greenways, trails, and watersheds for communities throughout Pennsylvania.
Wheeler envisions nature schools using the natural areas as outdoor classrooms to teach children everything from plant identification to food harvesting and conservation.
Value-added bonus
Auman describes the importance of natural outdoor play areas in another way.
“Studies have shown that kids that thrive on a traditional playground are different from kids who thrive in a nature playground,” he added. “More of the creative side emerges in a natural setting. The best of all worlds is an intermingling between the two types of play.”
The value of outdoor play and learning is important in shaping the next generation of environmental stewards.
“Unless you have a relationship with nature, why would you care if it’s degraded with a loss of biodiversity and collapse of ecosystems,” he asks. “I’m hopeful that the relationship with this local
stream might be an entry point for a young person to care about their environment, and have a reason to come to the park to experience nature.”
What is it?
There are people who look at the nature playground and don’t understand what they are seeing, notes Auman.
“I describe [the nature play area] to them as a stage in which the children are the actors, and props—like loose parts—make the space fully functional, as we envisioned it in the plan,” he explained.
“It will change and evolve over time, based on children’s input and what we learn. I think it’s pretty exciting!”
The outdoor nature area is even more important, adds Auman, in the age of COVID, when community members tend to feel separated and isolated, and the outdoors becomes one of the few places people can gather and still feel safe.
“If the last two years have shown us anything, it’s the importance of outdoor spaces for a community, whether that’s bringing us together for an outdoor performance or whether that’s just space for individuals to enjoy being in nature. Investing in these kinds of downtown parks is really critical, because they can fulfill both roles. “
Wheeler adds another perspective.
“I think the vision became, Hufnagle Park can offer something really different than a regular playground—one that takes you away to a space where it doesn’t feel so much like an urbanized space.
It was very much an intention to bring nature back into our downtown in a way that is respectful of the landscape and respectful of nature in a way that playgrounds usually aren’t.”
Feedback from the public indicates the intention has been realized.
“People love coming here, so much so that they come multiple times a week,” said Wheeler. “I hear it from families who enjoy bringing their children, and I hear it from individuals who come down to watch what’s going on. The good news is that we have a very engaged community in Lewisburg that always looks for ways to improve things, with an understanding that public investments spur economic activity, tourism, and destination recreation. Having a community that is solid and safe and attractive helps the entire region.”
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The Bull Run Greenway project also included the construction of a shared use trail from Market Street to Bucknell University’s campus at South Sixth Street; the realignment of Limestone (Bull) Run to improve water quality and restore the floodplain; and the installation of new playground equipment and unitary safety surfacing donated by Playworld®, an international, commercial playground equipment manufacturer based in Lewisburg, and a division of PlayPower® Inc., to honor local volunteers and first responders. Future plans include the addition of an amphitheater and sculpted terraces on the banks of the stream. The total cost was $1.4 million and was funded through grants from PennDOT, Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development along with funds from Lewisburg Borough.
