Family Green

In a city known for innovation and love of the outdoors, Portlanders are finding new ways to connect to nature at a recently built play area in Southeast Portland. On any given day, Westmoreland Park is packed with children digging in the sand, climbing on boulders and log features, or building forts with large sequoia branches. Adults, too, are inspired by the natural elements and participate alongside children, exploring the play area’s unique features.

A recent U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project (in conjunction with the City of Portland Bureau of Environmental Services and Portland Parks & Recreation) restored Crystal Springs Creek to its natural flow through Westmoreland Park. The creek restoration meant that the park’s aging playground had to be moved away from the restored floodplain to higher ground. Portland Parks & Recreation saw this as an opportunity for a brand-new play area that would serve as a pilot project for nature-based play in the Portland park system. Sandra Burtzos, PP&R senior project manager, assembled a design team that included: GreenWorks, PC; environmental artist Adam Kuby; Mainline Design; KPFF Consulting Engineers; Cascadian Landscapers; Oregon Log Homes; and Stone Sculptures, Inc.

The nature-play area at Westmoreland Park officially opened on Oct. 25, 2014.

Our team anticipated that the play area would engage a broad age range. But the project has far exceeded expectations for attracting both the young and the young at heart. People come from all over the region to experience Westmoreland Park, and children are entertained for hours.

"I had the opportunity to take my daughter over to the new playground," one park visitor wrote. "She was able to reconnect with not only being human, but really with being a kid."

"It's the biggest, baddest, best play area I have ever been to!" exclaimed another visitor. Within a few short months of opening, the park is a success story for what is possible, and for what nature play can provide to enhance a community and reconnect people with nature.   

So, what is nature-based play? It's a current movement that responds to a basic human need in children – a connection to nature. Nature-based play areas provide environments where children can learn from natural elements and sow seeds of stewardship by fostering a deep connection to natural surroundings. 

Nature-based play has so many documented benefits, including improved imagination, creativity, problem solving, social development, cooperation, self-awareness, self-esteem, and improved balance and strength. 

Oregon Natural Play Initiative, a group of professionals who support and promote natural play in Oregon, says, “Natural Play challenges and fascinates children and teaches them about the wonders and intricacies of the natural world while they explore and play within it. It is intuitive and unstructured, constructive (or deconstructive), and timeless, encouraging interaction with natural materials, features, indigenous vegetation, and creative landforms.”

The theme behind the Westmoreland Park design is the restoration story of nearby Crystal Springs. We developed a sequence to the spaces that metaphorically follows the path of rainwater from the Cascades to Crystal Springs. This story is expressed through carved basalt columns accenting the pathway between the grove of sequoias and the bottom of the creek channel. 

While visually engaging, the park is also intended to be safe, with play features adhering to national safety guidelines where applicable, and maintenance-friendly. This meant that a lot of the design process took place in the field. The team worked together in the fabricators’ workshops and onsite to determine the acceptable level of risk for each play element, evaluating each boulder and log, while still providing beneficial challenges important to childhood development. 

Play features include: 

• The Creek Channel, a concrete stream channel with willow tunnels, water pumps and sand, where children manipulate the water’s flow. Everyone has opportunity to participate in the fun; an elevated pooling area and at-grade water pump provide access to wheelchairs. 
   
• The Forest Mound features salvaged logs tilted at inclines for climbing. The large and small logs leaning against the forest mound represent log jams in creeks and streams of the Cascades. The logs are sanded smooth with kerfed ends to avoid splintering, and treated with non-toxic internal wood stabilizer to increase the life cycle of each log. 
   
• The eight-foot high Mountain Mound is comprised of mortared boulders of varying sizes, providing degrees of climbing challenge for all ages and abilities. 
   
• The area encourages creative play with Loose Parts, including sequoia branches, pine cones, etc. Metal posts provide support for forts and other creative building. 
   
• The Log Climbers are salvaged log segments for climbing, functioning as both sculpture and play. Logs are cut at angles and carefully composed to provide multiple climbing routes and challenges. 

Intrigued? Check out these other GreenWorks projects incorporating nature-based play sprinkled throughout The Intertwine:

• Khunamokwst Park in Northeast Portland's Cully neighborhood, opened 2015
• Roger Tilbury Memorial Park in the Cedar Mill neighborhood of Portland, opened 2015
• Trillium Creek Park in Damascus, opened 2014
• Pioneer Park in Beaverton, opened 2014
• Engelman Park in Wilsonville, opened 2012
• Gateway Green in Portland, currently in the conceptual design phase
• Mt. Hood Community College Early Childhood Center in Gresham, opened 2011

Outdoor school has provided high-quality, place-based science education to Oregon youth for nearly 60 years. Launched in southern Oregon’s Curry County in 1957 as a way to reengage young people with nature and the natural resource economy, by 1970 more than 80 percent of Oregon middle school students attended outdoor school.

Outdoor school programs take place at a pivotal stage in a child’s development, creating meaningful memories that last a lifetime. In addition to getting real-world, hands-on, down-in-the-muck knowledge about the natural world and how it works, the skills and experiences gained through outdoor school instill self-confidence, help youth realize their leadership potential, and make them more self-sufficient.

There is something transformative about taking a group of young people into the woods for a week. Not only do they have time to learn more by doing, they learn how to live with kids from all over, with different backgrounds. Many outdoor school programs use high school students as junior counselors. Being responsible for 10 to 12 sixth graders for a week changes their lives, too.

But don’t take my word for it. Here's what Firelily, a student in Sandy, says about her time at outdoor school:

“I am a fourth-timer [student leader] at Sandy River ODS, and I believe that it is a terrific program. It is an extremely important way for sixth graders to learn about nature, conservation of resources, themselves, and how to interact with others around them. In the words of site supervisor Snake, 'We live in a made-up world; out here in the forest is the real world.' I can honestly say that ODS has helped me to become more confident in myself, and through it I have found that I want to be a special needs teacher.”

Her story is not unique. The following quotes come from letters in support of outdoor school written to the Portland Public School Board when funding was in doubt in 2012:

“Outdoor school saved my life, really.” 

“If not for outdoor school, I would have dropped out of school.”

“I am a geologist/naturalist/school teacher/better person because of outdoor school.”

Many educators across the state know how valuable outdoor education is. In addition to sending their sixth graders to outdoor school, Tillamook School District integrates outdoor education into every grade level. Why? In the words of Superintendent Randy Schild, “Doing is the best way to learn.” 

First graders learn about simple machines by moving logs across the playground. High school students monitor wetland health; develop new uses for agricultural “byproducts;” and have earned trips to national and international science competitions, as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars in scholarships. 

Watch a short video of Superintendent Schild on the value of outdoor education.

Outdoor school historically was available to nearly every Oregon child: urban, rural; eastern, western; affluent, poor; able-bodied and disabled. Yet today, only about 45 percent of Oregon youth have the opportunity to attend outdoor school — and mostly for a reduced, three-day program rather than a full week. This number is dropping every year, as school districts struggle to find funding for this exceptional program. We can’t afford to lose this Oregon tradition. But we are. 

In the Portland metro region, thanks to funding from Metro, outdoor school is hanging on … but just barely. Depending on the school district, students may have to pay (Portland Public Schools asks families to pay $120 for a three-day program) or raise funds to go. Some years ago, Metro enacted a $1-per-ton tipping fee on solid waste that pays for one day of outdoor school for all participating students. This has kept a three-day version of the program going in all but two metro-area school districts.

A new group, the Oregon Outdoor Education Coalition, has formed to give voice to the thousands of supporters and providers of outdoor education throughout Oregon. OOEC’s first project is to secure sufficient and sustainable funding to send every Oregon fifth or sixth grader to a full week of outdoor school or a comparable program that meets local needs. With the support of the Gray Family Foundation; Friends of Outdoor School; the Oregon Forest Resource Institute; Metropolitan Group; Davis, Hibbits, Midghall; and many others, the OOEC is mounting a public will-building campaign to persuade the Oregon legislature to invest $22 million a year to make Outdoor School For All a reality. 

We are launching the Outdoor School for All campaign on January 30 with a rally at the World Forestry Center in Portland from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. There will be fun activities for children and adults, food from local vendors, and stories from some of Oregon's most passionate outdoor school supporters — not to mention a surprise appearance from soccer mascot Timber Joey.

This is a pivotal time for outdoor education in Oregon, and we need your help showing that outdoor school programs have broad public support. So bring your wood cookie name-tag and your children, and join us.

Follow Outdoor School for All and RSVP for the kick-off on Facebook.

David Bond wants to sell you something. He’ll say anything, really. As long as it gets you and your kids outdoors.

In his new documentary Project Wild Thing, the British filmmaker – alarmed that his young daughter was choosing to spend 97 percent of her waking time indoors – sets out to reverse shrinking demand for outdoor play by employing the same marketing tactics that sell Nintendos.

Now Bond is bringing his pitch to America, with a week-long set of Portland events that starts today.

We Skyped with Bond the day before his flight, in an interview that ranged from Norwegian villages to lightning rods and Hollywood blockbuster The Hunger Games.

***

So why does the United States need Project Wild Thing?

The United States fares quite badly in terms of reported childhood wellbeing on the Unicef survey.

Nationwide, it's a big issue for you, as it is for us in Britain, that children are less and less connected to their natural environment.

An enormous amount of the thinking that led to Project Wild Thing – from the Nature Network to Richard Louv – has come out of the States. In some ways, you're ahead of us. In other ways, you're really a catastrophic representation of what can go wrong.

What’s gone wrong?

We've identified 11 major barriers between children and the outdoors, things that are high in the U.S. and U.K.. Things like traffic and road safety, perceptions toward stranger danger (fear of strangers in the media).

A risk averse, litigious culture makes it hard for organizations to let children roam freely without panicking about the risks.

Project Wild Thing isn't just a film anymore. What's happened since your October 2013 release?

Well, in the film, as a kind of joke, I appoint myself the Marketing Director of Nature, and then we start this campaign to try to sell nature to children. In the process, we actually do a campaign – we get lots of free ad space and creatives helping us.

As a result of doing that, we got a lot of real people coming and saying “we want to join the movement.” We started signing people up, and the Wild Network was born. Now it has thousands of members, and quite a wide reach. It's been amazing to see, just in the last months since we launched.

What does the Wild Network do?

The insight from the film is that while there's a supply of green space out there, and organizations that offer natural experiences to children and parents, in economic terms, people aren't demanding it.

The reason for this shrinking demand is that the alternatives are demanded more voraciously: screen time, computer games, time indoors playing with toys. The Wild Network exists so that all of the organizations that want to sell outdoor play to children can use it to make a big noise about the benefits of their product.

When will you know that this big marketing noise is successful?

If you're marketing Nintendos, you know precisely how many you sold. But there's very little measurement of outdoor time for children. So it's a challenge to figure out if we're having an effect. At the moment, we're judging success by whether debate has been stimulated in the U.K.. We're looking at creating a measurement for time spent outdoors as well.

There's a gap there that we need to figure out. Do we use proxy sales, like rubber boots? Some power companies have suggested that we correlate power consumption with time spent outdoors. We also want to ask questions like what's the most outdoorsy city and the most outdoorsy day? We need answers like these to sell nature in an ongoing, cost-effective, celebratory way.

What nations, in your opinion, should we look to? Who already does what you call "Wild Time" well?

There's that great saying, if you design a town for a child and an eighty-year-old, then you end up with a really great town. Certainly in Northern Europe and Holland, they're much better at the supremacy of the child and the older person over the automobile.

I've just written a blog about the Norwegian philosophy of love of the outdoors. Land is considered to be everyone's to roam on, to move freely through fields.

Scandinavians also have the belief that children need to be plugged into the natural world from a very young age. Newborns are often taken outdoors their first day. There's a different intention there. Formal education starts later, but they end up scoring well compared to nations like ours, which school our children much younger.

How do you counter the fears of risk-averse cultures like ours?

I have to be careful how I answer so as not to be rude, but it's nonsense. If you look logically at the risk of contracting these diseases, they're vanishingly small. It's equivalent to worrying about being struck by lightning. We don't attach lightning conductors to our children's heads when we take them outside. We don't act on the risk. But for some reason in the U.K., and the U.S. I think, we act on the fear of disease or stranger danger in very illogical ways.

In the U.K., some are reacting quite strongly to the Wild Network, saying that our product is dangerous. But it's in fact really good for you, and the alternatives are dangerous. A life lived indoors, in front of the screen, is far more sinister in terms of the long-term risks of diabetes, heart disease, obesity.

But as Nature’s Marketing Director, that’s not the sales pitch you use in the film. What’s your angle?

We try to be playful, to get people to see our product as fun and free.

A lot of charities, NGOs, organizations who have traditionally been responsible for selling the joys of an outdoor life, have often done so through quite negative messaging: get your children outside or the climate will suffer, or they won't understand polar bears. In the Wild Network, we're trying really hard to have fun, not make people feel badly.

What demographic is proving the hardest sell so far? Parents?

Actually, it's teenagers. There's scientific evidence that says if you don't get children normalized to an outdoor life by the time they're seven or eight, then it just gets increasingly hard to persuade them to enjoy it. If you're a teenager in the depths of hormonal change, deep into social media and that's the way you're expressing yourself, having someone like me come along and say “Hey, let's put on some Wellington boots,” that's not even going to begin to break through. You'll see some of those kids in the film, who are almost unreachable.

Is there any way you've found to break into this particularly tricky market?

The Hunger Games is a really interesting representation of a wild life that teenagers really understand. The message is that there's something highly resilient about an outdoor person – that they're more determined, more likely to survive and be tough.

Teens in the U.K. respond well to a statistic that 80 percent of successful entrepreneurs were tree climbers when they were kids. So if you want to be a successful entrepreneur, a good place to hone the skills of a self-starter is in the outdoors.

So the sell there isn't climate change or understanding polar bears?

Appealing to a teenager's self-interest can be highly effective. That's been a big insight for us. You and I might respond well to an ethical consideration that we want our children to be nice to each other and know the names of plants and animals, but there are waves of people who are more motivated by financial gain or status. And these are people we have to communicate with as well. Finding those pathways has been really fun.

What's the plan for your week here in The Intertwine?

I'm really excited that a Wild Network might be launched in Portland. We're gathering nature's marketing department here for a big brainstorming. This would be the first Wild Network in the States, and we hope it might be the start of more marketing of nature by groups across the U.S..

Your daughter plays a big role in the film. How have your efforts to up wild time for kids worked out at home?

Well, they know they can make me really happy just by saying they want to go outdoors more. Whether they genuinely do or not, I really don't care. My daughter, who I measured at about three percent of her waking time outdoors, is now at about twelve percent. She's actively choosing to go outdoors far more than she ever did before. So that's amazing.

For more than 15 years, Project YESS at Mount Hood Community College has partnered with nature to help “at-risk” youth in East Multnomah County set sturdier roots.

Running work crews four times a year, eight weeks each, the Project YESS Youth Conservation Corps (PYYCC) hires low-income, underserved youth aged 16-21 for hardy projects like native seed collection; maintaining, building, and decommissioning trails; removing old fencing; and eradicating invasive, non-native plants.

We think conservation work is an ideal vehicle for youth development. Restoration projects at sites like Beavercreek Natural Area -- about which our crew members recently presented to the Metro Council -- engage them in a positive real-world experience, show them how to be good employees, and create opportunities to build self-esteem while giving back to families and communities.

We also think of PYYCC as a way to bring nature to young people who may not have the means or motivation to seek it on their own, thus fostering a lifelong connection and developing our next generation of conservationists.

Now, thanks to a new Metro partnership, we’re able to increase Project YESS’s focus on outdoor field work with the Metro-specific Youth Ecology Corps -- effectively doubling the number of youth on our work crews.

We’re thrilled. But what do the youth think about all this? We asked three Project YESS crew members -- Lexi, Brad and Hanna, all Gresham 19-year-olds -- about their job and what it means to them.

Why did you join the Project YESS Conservation Crew?

LEXI: Originally I joined the crew to get job experience, but within the first couple weeks I started to love working with nature and learning new things. I couldn't have asked for a better first job.

BRAD: The reason I joined was initially to get my GED. I was running low on options and my father wanted me to get out of the house and do something for a change.

HANNA: I joined because I didn’t have any work experience. I was really excited to start because I’ve always loved nature and thought this would be a great job.

What's the hardest part about the work? The best part?

LEXI: The hardest part is probably the physical part of it. We work really hard out there, and it gets hot during the summer. But it’s a good workout and I always give my 100 percent.

BRAD: The hardest part is orienting my time to get to bed on time so I won’t be weary the next day. The best part of work is absolutely everything. It’s opened my eyes to the importance of habitat restoration, and even just plain nature restoration. I feel like a much healthier person, and in the midst of doing what I love I gain valuable skills and experience to further my career in this field.

HANNA:  I would say the hardest part of this job would be the manual labor. The best part is being in nature all day.

What has been the biggest surprise for you?

LEXI: For me, it was how much I ended up loving this job. Before I started, I wasn't really sure I was going to be interested in what we were doing, but now I love being in nature all the time. We get to learn about all the different plants and animals, while working to protect our native species.

BRAD: The biggest surprise for me is how much knowledge my brain can hold now. Before I joined Project YESS I felt like my brain just wasn’t able to keep up with what everybody expected of me. However, I can remember so much now! I’ve been learning about native plants and their medicinal properties. Like Verbascum Thapsus (aka Mullein). It has anti-inflammatory, anti-tumor, and analgesic properties. Just little things like that have made me very proud of myself.

HANNA: For me, it’s how far I can really push myself, not just physically but mentally. For example, I never thought I would be able to walk for a week on a backpacking trip. I ended up walking 32 miles, something I thought to be impossible.

Would you want to do outdoor work for a living?

LEXI: I've given some thought to working outdoors for a living, I love nature, wildlife and learning something new every day. I'd love to work with animals, that would be an amazing job.

BRAD: I don’t just want to, I am going to do outdoor work for a living, because of what society has done to our planet. Native culture has always interested me, and I would love to know botany so I am aware of the edibility, medicinal properties, and potential harm of native and non-native species.

HANNA: I most definitely want a job in the outdoors. Who would want to be cooped up in an office all day? My dream job would be to become a naturalist interpreter. I want this job so I can pass on my love for nature and help more “city” people understand what’s going on around them.

What has the job taught you?

LEXI: This job has taught me a lot about responsibility, teamwork getting out of my comfort zone, and also how important it is to protect our native species and wildlife.

BRAD: That I am not a piece of trash like I thought I was. I’m a fun-loving, hard-working, and curious person, eager to learn and to help others. And that I love, love, love the outdoors. I wouldn’t be myself without it.

HANNA: This job has taught me a lot about myself, like how if I put my mind to something I’m good at it. I also learned a lot about nature as well, not just the names of plants and trees but how to understand them and the bigger picture. Nature needs love, too.

In 1984, Roger Ulrich’s “surgery recovery and view out the hospital window study” set a worldwide standard for research on the health benefits of nature.

Since then, Dr. Ulrich has been a key driver of the still limited body of scientific research on how exposure to gardens and nature in health care settings — like here at Legacy Health, where Dr. Ulrich has consulted for the past fifteen years — can reduce patient pain and stress while improving other outcomes.

This early research is part of why interdisciplinary teams at Legacy’s six hospitals have created eleven therapeutic gardens to serve our patients, families and employees year-round, 24-7.

Now, in his recent Lancet Neurology study “Gardens that take care of us,” Ulrich and fellow researchers state the need for more rigorous study on how gardens provide measurable benefits in patients with specific medical conditions.

We’re ready to break that new ground.

Thanks to a $560,000 grant from the TKF Foundation's Nature Sacred Initiative, we’re launching three new research studies centered on our Terrace Garden, located outside Legacy Emanuel's family birth center and cardiovascular intensive care units. All studies (read more below!) are managed by Legacy Research Institute and scheduled for completion by October 2014.

“We know in our hearts that these gardens are really important,” said Lori Morgan, M.D., Legacy Emanuel’s Chief Administrative Officer, at our recent garden dedication. “Now we have the funding to prove how they help.”

Birthing study (already underway)

This study focuses on 100 low-risk pregnant women recruited from obstetricians and nurse midwives practices based at Legacy Emanuel. Patients randomized to the garden will use a birthing study log for data purposes. Physiological data will be collected on all subjects, as well as subjective data collected via questionnaires.

Families and stress study (scheduled to begin shortly)

Dr. Ulrich's studies have shown that stress, in addition to afflicting patients, is also a burden for both patient families (especially those of acutely ill patients such as those in intensive care units (ICU)) and nurses and other healthcare professionals.

At Emanuel, families of cardiovascular ICU patients will be recruited to take part in a study that observes and measures the effects of time spent in the garden on their emotional state during their family member’s stay in the ICU.

Nurses and green time study (scheduled to begin shortly)

Evidence suggests that access to gardens can reduce stress in health care workers, increase job satisfaction, and may help foster personnel recruitment and retention.

In 1995, post-occupancy studies of hospital gardens concluded that many health care employees used gardens to achieve a restorative break from negative work conditions. In 2008, researchers found that nurses with daily exposure to a nature window view in their work areas had lower stress and reported higher alertness than nurses with no window overlooking nature.

Nurses working in the ICU and Family Birth Center will be invited to participate in the nurse study. RNs will spend time each work shift in the garden and complete a nursing study log each day.

So, why again do our studies break new ground?

Despite the growing research on health care gardens, knowledge gaps and methodological shortcomings remain. Rather than rely on real nature exposure, most investigations to date have used simulations such as video or pictures. And the few studies that used real gardens lacked well-controlled randomized study methodologies.

Additionally, no prior research has examined the effects of gardens or nature on any of Legacy Health's study groups: women in maternity units and their infants; families of long-stay patients in intensive care units; or nurses from Labor & Delivery and Critical Care during 12-hour work shifts.

Because our studies will bring an unparalleled level of scientific rigor to this work, we anticipate that the results will, in the words of Dr. Ulrich, “send a signal to readers of medical reports to take this seriously” and “bring with it a more credible case for nature and sacred spaces.”

Watch for the announcement of the research results in October 2015.