Downing Children's Garden

TESSERE provided architectural and landscape architectural design service for the Downing Children’s Garden.  The Garden encompasses more than an acre of land with 12 different themed areas, including a children’s amphitheater, the Cargill Cares Farm, the Party Barn, the Enchanted Glen, and a swinging rope bridge. Children are exposed to plants and flowers indigenous to Kansas, but are also introduced to imaginary plants, such as peanut butter and jelly flowers, popcorn plants and bat-face shrubs.

When designing the Garden, TESSERE adhered to Botanica’s primary goal of making each person’s visit special and important, and ultimately connecting children to nature. The Garden allows children to learn by active participation such as touching plants, smelling flowers, digging in dirt and running free. Children are encouraged to learn with hands-on activities, participatory lessons, demonstrations, and experiments. The Garden is also an art gallery with works of art by local artists that complement the imaginative play aspect of the garden, including giant dragonflies that appear to fly above the natural pond, caterpillars as big as a car, trees with faces and a sandy ant farm that dwarfs its visitors.