Goin' Boatin'

One of the aspects of my new landscape design for our new church, Immanuel, was to somehow build the playground around a theme. I dislike theme's because most are cheesy or lame so I played with how to do this and not be either of those. Another problem was the dramatic slope where I have envisioned the playground to go... a drop of 5 feet in about a 100 foot area. As with so many of my ideas, they came to me while I was pondering at night, unable to sleep.

My first thought was a boat or other feature to give the kids a dynamic place to play that would anchor the playground, be the focal point. I kept going back to a boat and I saw it as similar to the boat in the spray park at Bud Miller in Lloydminster. But I didn't want the galley at the back and I wanted it more accessible... and without the water dynamic... that would be a separate feature. My vision was to "sink" this boat into the slope with a retaining wall that would define two areas... the upper area for preschool play, the lower area for grade school. The hull of the ship would be emerging from the retaining wall with the back half "sunk in" to the hillside. The lower area would give entrance to the "hold" of the ship through an opening at the front with a short, immovable ramp. The upper area would look very much like the main deck of the boat at Bud Miller, though the entrance to the deck would be at ground level with the galley being a covered "house" with the design much closer to the Ark... and it came to me... how about a Noah's Ark theme? With a real ark!!

I latched onto that idea and started calling around. Guy at the Lloyd city office was very helpful and gave me the information on the parks designer (who should be congratulated, Bud Miller is an INCREDIBLE park that everyone should see). I then called Ted of EDC Collaborative, the landscape designers for the project, and not only does he know a great deal about it, he is willing to provide us with the boat plans if the city of Lloyd does not object. Our boat will be quite a bit different, but of the same size and dimension as the Lloyd boat. But any plans would be wonderful... especially for this completely boat illiterate person. A local contractor had built it from the plans so we don't need a boat builder to erect our Ark... though in hindsight Noah was certainly not a boat builder before his 100 year project of Ark building with his sons.

Speaking of which, in church on Sunday we had guest pastor, Russ Lee. He is a reknowned Christian singer, and former drug dealer, from Tennessee whose concert at our church was the night before. The boys attended and said he was phenomenal. Anyway, he closed his sermon with this thought... a team of professionals build the Titanic and a complete amateur build the Ark. Think about that.