Visitors to City Park will soon be able to explore the long-awaited, $7.9 million playground that simulates the box canyons, beaver dams and other wild features of Colorado.

The Nature Play project, which is scheduled to open later this year, has been a construction fence fixture at the park ever since it broke ground in January 2023 — 20 months ago.

Project leaders at the time said it would open in late 2024, but about eight months ago, a Denver Museum of Nature & Science (DMNS) staffer mistakenly shared a notice saying it would be open this summer, prompting DMNS leaders to publicly reassert the original timeline.

“We always said it would open in fall 2024, so at the moment we still have to close out permits and are in the process of making sure all the plants we selected are going in,” said Jacqueline Altreuter, director of strategic planning at DMNS, and leader of Nature Play.

“When I saw that (false opening date) over the holidays I was like, ‘Oh no!’ so we tried to take that down pretty quickly,” she added.

Nature Play is a complex project that digs much deeper than the grassy expanses typically seen at Denver’s largest park. Its goal is to simulate miniature versions of the alpine tundra, grassland prairies, wetlands and other distinct environments that cover the state.

One of the templates was set 75 years ago, when Denver Botanic Gardens first opened in City Park. “Some of the areas in the southeast part were theirs before they moved to York Street, so there are lots of leftover plant species still growing,” Altreuter said. “Restoring those waterways, which were originally designed by Dutch architect Saco Rienk DeBoer to mimic mountain streams, is a big part of this.”

Nature Play brings together Denver Parks & Recreation and the DMNS for a project that’s been six years in the making. Situated just outside the museum, the 4-acre, gently hilly strip offers interactive chances for kids and students to learn how they work. That includes the process of carefully restoring natural ecosystems, museum officials said.

“Since Nature Play will be landscaped with native Colorado plants, we are hoping that we will see a return of insect species that aren’t currently found in City Park right now,” said John Demboski, senior vice president of science at the DMNS, in a statement.

Animal footprints from Colorado wildlife lead visitors into different areas, whether it’s a wooden swing set or the path of the waterway that connects the mini-ecosystems.

“When we asked people to tell us about experiences they had in nature that were memorable and meaningful and really lasted for them, 98% described something with water,” Altreuter said. “Now, we’re in an arid state, but we’re all connected by and reliant on water, so we wanted that to be a big component.”

As such, the project was designed to amplify the sounds of splashing water by narrowing the restored waterway at points and adding rocks to create the illusion of a larger stream or river. Nature Play uses very little water, however, and is fed by a diverted storm drain. The same water source irrigates Washington Park and feeds City Park’s Ferrill Lake, and it all eventually filters into the South Platte River, according to Denver Parks & Recreation.

So far, the only Nature Play impression for visitors has been the construction fences concealing the playground, plus a new, winding sidewalk that’s meant to discourage cyclists from barreling down a pedestrian path. But inside, they’ll soon see hundreds of new trees and plants, a 20-foot-tall Bighorn Sheep sculpture and play structure (it’s Colorado’s official state animal), a slide, climbable beaver dam, native pollinators, carven-wood benches, and tableaus inspired by the museum’s dozens of dioramas in its Explore Colorado gallery.

Many of the features in the playground spring from the 800 people surveyed about it in 2021, and crews had to change gears at times, as when researchers discovered a native bee colony they didn’t want to disrupt or move. Staying nimble through the project, which broke ground last year, has allowed designer Dig Studios to adapt to changing conditions, officials said.

About 70% of the space featured existing trees, which they needed to work around, but only one tree was removed,  Altreuter said (and that’s because it was dead). Seeing squirrels, falcons, foxes, and bunnies frequent the construction site reassured workers at ECI Site Construction that they hadn’t disrupted the habitat — at least not too much.

“There’s a lot of thoughtfulness and artistry inside the space,” Altreuter said, noting that the Loveland artist known as Chainsaw Mama created custom wooden benches for the project. “We want to connect the museum and its mission to the park, and this brings together so many ways to do that.”

Originally Published: August 15, 2024 at 6:31 a.m.