60 South Bay Accent
COURTESY OF CHILDREN’S DISCOVERY MUSEUM; OPPOSITE: MOSES KINNAH
ture and to outdoor play is being enrolled
in soccer or some organized sport or just
going to a play park. Those are wonderful
experiences, but we also know that the
Bay Area has a tremendous amount of
open space. Is there something we could
do that could help parents feel more comfortable
with their children, navigating
outdoor environments?”
Bill’s Backyard offers a safe, natural play
space for young kids—it’s enclosed by a
fence—that still feels open enough for
them to run, explore, climb and imagine.
“They can go up the giant Tree Climber
and scamper across Robinson Crusoe–
like, and then over into another tree. They
can scale the hill, and roll down or come
down the slides, just like any playground,”
she says. “There is a lookout tower, so kids
can climb up to the top and be able to
see all the way across it to the Guadalupe
River, which, you know, it feels very high
off the ground to a little one.”
Seamlessly incorporating natural elements,
Bill’s Backyard features droughttolerant
plants and native trees like valley
oaks, blue oaks, and the kind of ground
cover and grasses that can be seen growing
naturally around the South Bay.
Little ones will likely spend hours happily
excavating in the giant dig pit or
walking along the riverbed designed to
echo the curves of the Guadalupe River.
“The riverbed will only have water when
Mother Nature provides it,” explains Jennings.
The 2016 drought brought about
dramatic changes, turning green vegetation
into brown shrubbery, and to display
the effects of depleted moisture levels,
Jennings and her staff wanted to show a
dry creek bed.
“Everyone needs to understand that
water is a precious resource, and the best
way to communicate it is for it only to
have water when water is available,” she
continues, “but it’s also a wonderful place
for kids to explore because there’ll be rocks
of all shapes and sizes. You can pick them
up and you’ll discover bugs underneath.
There’ll be plants that just naturally grow
in between them. There’ll be rocks that
you can move and figure out how to potentially
create a bridge to the other side
and walk across them. It’s in this kind of
space that kids learn what they actually
can do. We call it ‘safe risk-taking.’”
It’s the kind of experimentation that kids
naturally do, she points out. “Can I go a
little higher? How about a little higher?”
Keyhole-shaped garden plots where
vegetables and herbs will grow surround
a spectacular Tree of 40 Fruit, carefully
cultivated and grown by professor and
artist Sam van Aken with more than 40
different variations of stone fruits, from
peaches and plums to apricots and nectarines.
It’s the first of its kind seen on the
West Coast and is a living demonstration
of part of the fascinating history of California
agriculture.
Little ones will
likely spend hours
happily excavating
in the giant dig
pit, or walking
along the riverbed
that mimics the
Guadalupe River.
An overview
of Bill’s
Backyard