Nature-Based Play Areas

Forest Park Playscape. St. Louis, MO

Forest Park Playscape - St. Louis, MO

This Playscape of seventeen acres of restored prairie and woodland in the middle of urban Forest Park invites visitors to explore a continuous accessible path that visits 7 ecologically themed play spaces that are enjoyed by school groups, families, dog walkers and nature enthusiasts. Rubus was the landscape architect consultant in partnership with Interboro Partners & David Mason Associates.

Nature School Residence - Guilford, CT

Nature School & Home - Guilford, CT

Combining a home forest school business and a play area for elementary school children, we designed four different areas: native plant front yard, constructed play, natural play and screening with forest regeneration. Local materials, native and edible plants and many trees ground this project on a beautiful rolling site.

Abraham Baldwin Middle School - Guilford, CT

Funded by the Baldwin PTO, Rubus designed a nature-based play space within the Baldwin outdoor recess area. We partnered with A&W Sanitation to install this interactive area using locally-sourced logs and boulders. Elements include: outdoor classroom, balancing play, climbing play and two trailhead leading to Bitner Park.

Zucker Natural Exploration Area

The Sandy storm took many mature trees down in Prospect Park and soon afterwards, the Prospect Park Alliance got a request from Donald and Barbara Zucker to build a play space on the north end of the park. We had an excellent contractor: Curtis from Barnhart Restoration, and designed and built the Zucker Natural Exploration Area with only the down trees, sand and a lot of imagination.

Vanderbilt Playground

One of the most rewarding experiences as a landscape architect is to design a public place and see it actively used. This is a constant experience when working at Prospect Park. Vanderbilt Playground received 200 visitors the first weekend it was open. We chose an autumn color pallet based on the beautiful fall color in the park and designed custom bronze water features for all ages.

Bronze Water Features at Vanderbilt Playground

Prospect Park has a wonderful tradition of installing bronze water features in its playgrounds. As part of our Vanderbilt Playground design, I was fortunate to design several and worked with an artist to shape the final forms and witness casting.