Rotary PlayGarden’s Nature Play

What if a playground could feature the wonder of nature, stimulate imaginative open-ended play, and empower children with special needs to play alongside their siblings and friends? The Rotary Club of San José gifted the Rotary PlayGarden to the community in 2015 to bring this vision to life with the City’s first all-inclusive play space. Building on the success of this unique play environment, the same design team reconvened to expand the park with Nature Play Phase II.

MIG’s landscape architects integrated additional physical play opportunities and shade areas with nature play elements to encourage safe exploration and engagement among children of varying abilities. The fully accessible PlayGarden provides multiple activities that accommodate inclusive play needs and surpass accessibility requirements.

The nature play area features native plantings interlaced with logs and boulders to foster habitat and encourage exploration, climbing, balancing, building, and interacting with natural elements. A labyrinth composed of native shrubs and mature indigenous trees offers an opportunity for children to choose their own adventure. A living tunnel with laced willows and native grapes forms an inviting, shaded enclosure to relax, observe, and interact. An educational meeting space draws on natural features with a large fabric shade canopy and seating created from repurposed logs and boulders with saw-cut tops. Other unique elements include a sensory structure modeled after a giant California buckeye seedpod, an upside-down sensory tree, and ziplines. Visitors find their way through the PlayGarden along a bright blue tributary-like path that flows through the space—reflecting the park’s nearby Guadalupe River and connection to the San Francisco Bay.

The PlayGarden Nature Play Phase II additions provide valuable opportunities for imagination and self-directed discovery, sensory learning, physical and cognitive development, environmental awareness, and inclusion.