An adventure play park formed by the site’s natural features that provides unique recreational opportunities while enhancing natural habitat and strengthening the community’s connection to the environment.
Flat Fork Creek Park is a new sixty-acre environmental park and recreational playground transformed from a former farmstead. On the rural fringes of the county and serving a rapidly developing community of new families nearby, the park offers an interactive experience with the natural world. The design immerses visitors of all ages to a variety of outdoor experiences that inspires a deeper understanding of ecological systems, while multisensory experiences challenge visitors to engage the park through the seasons.
Previously as a farm, the existing site was extremely flat with approximately two feet of elevation change across roughly fifty-acres of fields, while the remaining ten-acres encompassed heavily wooded steep slopes along Flat Fork Creek. REA led the park’s master plan and subsequent design with a multi-disciplinary team driven by the vision of immersing visitors into the area’s natural ecology and encouraging nature play at multiple elevations. This concept was reinforced by getting visitors to four primary levels: creek, ground-level, mid-level and tree-top. Thus, the topography of the existing, flat site was heavily studied and modified to mimic natural drainage patterns, retain water in select areas, and to create rolling hills and berms that support recreational activities.
