Terra Nova Adventure Play Environment

The Terra Nova Adventure Play Environment is a play experience unique to the Lower Mainland. It is the result of an extensive and highly successful community planning process, and reflects the agricultural traditions of the area and complements the City’s growing collection of innovative parks. The play environment represents a major departure from other contemporary playgrounds in that most of the features are custom designed and manufactured using British Columbia sourced Yellow Cedar and sustainable design practices, rather than conventional, ‘off the shelf’ metal and plastic products.

Equally important the design of the Terra Nova Adventure Play Environment responds to concerns that have been raised among various professionals that children and adults are increasingly becoming disconnected from nature. In his book ‘Last Child in the Woods’ Richard Louv refers to this disconnection as “Nature-Deficit Disorder”. The City’s hope is that by constructing a dynamic play environment amongst trees and former farm fields, with a wide range of wildlife nearby, and adjacent to the Fraser River, one of the world’s great salmon producing rivers, we can help reconnect people with nature. And have fun in the process.

The Terra Nova Adventure Play Environment is organised into two distinct zones:

The ‘Paddock’ which was once home to horses and stables, now includes:

• tandem 35m long ziplines (8yrs +)
• 3m high ‘big’ swings (8yrs +)
• a ‘pivot’ swing (5yrs +)
• a twisting stainless steel hillside slide!(5yrs +)
• a rolling hill to hop, skip and bound down (2yrs +) and
• a meadow maze (2yrs +).

The ‘Homestead’, the site of a former farm house, includes:

• A custom designed 10m tall ‘Tree House’ with four platforms, a central rope ladder, and a stainless steel spiral slide (8yrs +)
• The Log Jam: A climbable timber structure (5yrs +)
• An ‘aerial’ rope walkway (5yrs +)
• The ‘Spinnery’ (5yrs +)
• A farm inspired water
• Custom climber, zipline, to-fro swings, pivot swing, large parkour