NAHANT — Johnson Elementary students celebrated the grand opening of their school’s forest playground this week as the play structure portion of the multi-year project finally nears completion.
Partially the brainchild of Johnson Elementary art teacher and Nahant Garden Club president Diana Brandi, the playground makes use of two acres of previously-overgrown land behind the school and features a number of educational structures, including an embankment slide, a musical fence, and an artifact table, all meant to encourage students to engage in the natural world around them.
“When we first started, it was just a bramble patch. All of the underbrush was invasive species, and while they had berries and looked beautiful, when it came to feeding the wildlife, it would be like them only having McDonald’s as a choice,” Brandi said. “They don’t have the kind of fatty substances they need for the fall, or they don’t have what they need for nesting for the spring, so we wanted to take all of those out.”
Wanting to foster a love of nature in students while also providing a service to Nahant’s ecosystems, Brandi set out to create a space that would accomplish both.
After an initial plan was laid out, preparations for the playground’s construction began in 2018, when the land was cleared of trees, poison ivy, and other debris to allow students to move around logs and get a feel for the park’s design.
The children, along with volunteers and independent contractors, then hand-drilled wood to create a fence and helped construct tables and seats out of logs. Gardens were also planted throughout the space by junior Garden Club gardeners.
“They need to understand that there’s a lot happening around them, and when they’re in the midst of it, I want them to have respect for the things they’ve helped, as well as the playthings they have,” Brandi said. “They can climb and slide and run up and down the hills and all of those things, but they also know that if they run up the hillside and not the stairs, that creates erosion, and we don’t want that.”
An added bonus? Most of the work was completed at little to no cost.
Principal Kevin Andrews told The Item in 2018 he expected the play area to be finished for less than $3,000 — no small feat when typical playground equipment can cost between $40,000 and $50,000.
Although the grand opening took place later than planned, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, Johnson Elementary students were happy to finally see their hard work come to life.
“It’s more like nature than all the other parks that we have,” said sixth-grader Brayden McCarthy, one of several students who took part in the playground’s construction. “It makes it more real.”
His classmate, fourth-grade class representative Staar Bascon, agreed.
Ione Byam Miller, another fourth-grade class representative, added: “All of our other parks are made out of metal, but most of the things that are in this playground are wood and stone and all natural things.”
The space itself is far from done, Brandi said, listing a number of gardening projects the students have planned for the coming months and years, including the creation of a grow wall and butterfly garden.
However, she’s excited to see the progress her students have made when it comes to their environmental knowledge.
“When I hear them talking, I realize how much they’ve gotten out of this experience. They’re now teaching the little kids, and that was my goal,” she said. “Once you train kids to look for these things and to be excited about them and have ownership of them, then they’ll take that on. It becomes second nature.”