(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — After nearly a decade of fundraising, donors and organizers gathered this morning to break ground on a new children’s garden at the Garfield Park Conservatory on Chicago’s west side.
Park District Superintendent Rosa Escareno led the group for the ceremonial shoveling of dirt inside the 6,000-square-foot-space.
Plans are for it to be transformed into a play place that includes a pit for digging a specially-designed climbing area and slides surrounded by plants under the conservatory’s glass roof.
“There will be a dedicated space for visitors with sensory processing disorders and a wheelchair accessible spiral ramp that will make its way all the way up to these beautiful, glass roof that you see above us,” Escareno said.
Mary Clare Bonaccorsi, vice chair of the Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance Board, says she hopes the garden inspires children.
“Gardens have been used universally by poets, artists and authors to symbolize life, beauty, safe havens,” Bonaccorsi said.
Almost half of the ten million dollar cost of the Elizabeth Morse Genius Children’s Garden came from private donations.
The garden replaces one that a donor says outlived its usual life in 2015.
It will be free to Chicago residents and is slated to open next fall.
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