The Bull Run Greenway Phase I project to renovate the Kidsburg section of Hufnagle Park calls for floodplain restoration and trail extension combined with all-ages recreation and nature play. The project is now entering design development, taking the master site development plans created as part of an extensive public process in 2014 and 2015 and transforming those concepts and ideas into detailed plans, specifications, and cross sections.

There's one part that still needs your input. The nature play component of the project is both one of the most alluring but also least clearly defined portions. During the design charrette in 2014 and throughout the public engagement process, the community gravitated towards images and concepts encouraging access to the creek and engagement with natural materials. But now we need to refine those concepts further.

Both Brian Auman, landscape architect and designer of the masterplan for the Bull Run Greenway, and Susan Chlebowski, educator and head of the BVRA Nature Preschool program, are working with groups of Bucknell students in the Environmental Studies 411 class this semester to both get input about local attitudes toward nature play generally and map nature play opportunities AND to help strategize and dream up what the nature play component of the Kidsburg Recreation Initiative in the Bull Run Greenway should look like.

This is a balancing act. On the one hand, public input is needed to make the project the best it can be and ensure it is responsive to local interests and needs. On the other hand, there's a recognition that nature play may not be well-understood. The hope is to simultaneously educate and elicit input on attitudes and knowledge that people may not even realize they have.

To that end, the public is invited to provide input in two ways right now:

1. Please come to a Nature Play Design Workshop at the Lewisburg Children's Museum on Sunday, April 14, from 10am to noon.
2. Please take the online survey assessing knowledge of and interest in nature play locally. Visit bit.ly/NaturePlay2019 to find the survey.

It would be great if you could help spread the word about both the workshop and the survey, too!

For a reminder about what the concept of nature play is, check out this re-release/update of an article on the topic published in our area several years ago.