Crooked Path Children's Garden

Falmouth, Massachusetts | 1999 | 2 acres

Ron Henderson, Manuel Morales, Bethany White, Karen Clancy, Robyn Reed Collaboration Barnstable County Fairgrounds Association

Trees (28) including an orchard of fruiting trees and a small grove of shade trees

The Crooked Path Children’s Garden is a seasonal play space inspired by local author, Thorton Burgess, who used his outdoor observations of nature as plots for his stories. In Burgess' first book, Old Mother West Wind (1910), he introduced the world to Peter Rabbit (known briefly as Peter Cottontail), Jimmy Skunk, Sammy Jay, Bobby Raccoon, Little Joe Otter, Grandfather Frog, Billy Mink, Jerry Muskrat, Spotty the Turtle, Old Mother West Wind, and her Merry Little Breezes.

The garden is on the grounds of the Barnstable County Fairgrounds where the Crooked Path Children’s Garden extends from a new apple orchard, through a restored woodland, along a new meadow path, pauses at a new story-telling pavilion with a rooftop overlook, through a hay bale maze, and concludes in a series of play dunes.