Once upon a time, before the age of tablets and helicopter parents, nature was a playground.

Children used to build forts, dig in the dirt, chase squirrels and play hide and seek.

Somewhere along the line, we decided to fence our children in. We created large pieces of brightly-coloured plastic and metal and told children how they were supposed to play on them. We rubber-padded or wood-chipped their surroundings and told ourselves we were keeping them “safe.”

And yet, the pull of nature remains strong. It’s why all the campgrounds within shooting distance of Vancouver are packed to the brim every summer weekend with families who have reserved months in advance. Walk around those campgrounds and you will see kids, in the woods, playing with sticks.

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The designers of one of Metro Vancouver’s most innovative playgrounds took their cues from nature, and from children.

Joseph Fry of the landscape architecture firm Hapa Collaborative was one of the lead designers behind Richmond’s Terra Nova Adventure Play Environment, which opened last year.

Two principles guided the design of Terra Nova, Fry said. One was creating a play area that fit with the natural environment, a wetland and agricultural area along the dike in Richmond. The other was giving children a sense of thrill and encouraging them to use their imaginations.

“Perception of danger is actually what kids want,” he said.

Fry and his team consulted two groups of children, in kindergarten and Grade 3. They visited the site, drew pictures and made sculptures of what they wanted to see. They wanted to get up high, so Hapa designed a 10-metre “tree fort” with a rope ladder to climb up and a spiral slide to get down.

“At the top of it, you can see airport, you can see the water. You can see the intertidal edge of the Fraser River,” Fry said. “We heard from the kids that they wanted to spin so fast they got sick, so we have a place called the spinnery.”

Other features that “push the edges,” as Fry puts it, include a tandem zip line, and swings that go as high as three metres. There are also elements that hardly required any construction, such as a rolling green hillside for kids to play on and trees to climb.

Terra Nova passes muster with Mariana Brussoni, an assistant professor who has researched childhood development at the University of B.C.’s school of population and public heath.

“One of the things that ... research has found is the importance of basically kids being able to put their own stamp on their play, to really extend their imaginations. Malleable ... and natural materials are a really good way of doing that,” she said.

Her criteria for a good playground? It has to have structures that can be used in multiple ways, encouraging kids to use their creativity.