squirrel’s eye view
Filed Under Going Green, Places | March 16, 2010
Sometimes it really helps to see the world from a different perspective, but it’s not always easy. A jaunt across the Greenheart Canopy Walkway at the UBC Botanical Garden, however, allows you to view the forest around you from up to 60 feet (17.5 meters) in the air, which gives you, and your kids, a whole new perspective indeed.
The only treetop walkway of its kind in Canada, and one of only two in North America, it was built by tree huggers, literally and figuratively. The Greenheart Conservation Company uses a patented “Tree Hugger” system that expands to allow tree growth to secure the walkway’s platforms and bridges to trees in the garden. And it all starts with an archer who sends the cables high up into the treetops.
You can traverse the walkway on your own, but we’d recommend the guided tour. We took it with three generations ranging in age from four months to seventy years and everyone enjoyed it. The tour lasts just long enough for kids and the facts will engage them as well as you. The walkway includes eight platforms, including one two-story one, and nine bridges. The guide kept the kids in hand – only allowing them to jump on the last bridge and only after they behaved for the rest of the tour.
The garden itself is in full bloom right now and it’s a wonderful place to spend time with your tots, especially if you don’t have much green space to call your own. Your little ones can cavort about without you having to worry about cars or dogs and it’s full of enticing little pathways, streams to poke about in, tree trunks to picnic upon and erratic boulders to climb. They have a winter scavenger hunt for kids that kept our brood amused and on the move and lots of different mini-gardens to explore.
What we’d like to do next is check out the zipline Greenheart Conservation recently completed at the San Diego Zoo – surely the line ups aren’t as long as at Robson Square? – or the walkway they’re currently building in Rwanda.
Greenheart Canopy Walkway: www.ubcbotanicalgarden.org/visitorinfo/greenheart-canopy-walkway.php
For a pictorial essay of our visit to the Garden please visit our yoyo diaries blog.
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