This beautiful wood came from two oaks (one white oak and one Northern Red Oak) on longtime Mount Rainier resident Mark Grisar’s property. They fell victim, as did an alarming number of oaks in our region, to the deluge then drought of last spring and summer. These two large, old oaks had witnessed more than two hundred years of local history. Mark generously gifted the wood to the park, and Edgar Tree Service transported it and did some initial work, making the pieces a bit more manageable.
Parents and kids began to rearrange the wood right away, creating a play area in the back corner of the park. Voila! Natural play!
Mount Rainier resident Bradley Padavick generously spent one Saturday morning fashioning several chairs for the “dining” area. It’s a Food Forest, after all.
And then these three young men moved into action. David McKindley-Ward, and Luke and Ben Walsh-Mellett are co-founders of Great Blue Company, a landscaping cooperative in Baltimore. They are Mount Rainier native sons who were kind of enough to do their home community a huge favor.
They picked up where Bradley left off, in the “dining room.”
Mount Rainier resident Shivali Shah (above) designed this very comfy chair. Below you’ll notice that some of the chairs even ended up having cool ottomans to accompany them.
They created a toddler play area near the street. It’s centered around the stump of another white oak that had to come down.
And then they moved around some very heavy pieces to create play structures for climbing and balance.
They connected it all up so a kid might be able to travel (should he or she dare) from the front to the back of the park without touching the ground.
It didn’t take long. . .
(Photos by Kathy Shollenberger unless otherwise indicated)
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