I know. It's an absolute travesty. A modest proposal would be to retain the bins in the large sports field-style parks, but remove them from parks that demonstrate high quality design, like the Toronto Music Garden or St. James Park.
I like the idea of naturalization here, myself. But this has never been as well thought out as it could have. The brook (Tomlinson) that flows in the open in the ravine to the north is in a pipe under the foot path here. While the area is small, it should be feasible to surface it and then have a boardwalk on piles off to one side.
The slopes are not a completely natural embankment (the ravine here mostly became houses at the turn of the last century, and this area was a residual landscape feature/flood containment location.)
But recreating something resembling the ravine to the north is workable. But they needed more attention on woody species planted, more maintenance, and should have introduced some native herbacious like ferns and assorted wildflowers.
As it stands, it manages to appear rather uncared for, without looking like natural forest. Nature will get it further along over time; though really if they ever want to surface the brook, they should do it before they have to cut down 150 mature trees to do it!
I spotted this in Councillor Bravo's newsletter regarding donated toys in parks. A parkette near me also has become a popular spot for donated toys, to the point where it almost feels like a toy dump rather than a playground. I think there are legitimate concerns about accessibility with toys scattered on the pathways, not to mention liability if someone were to trip.
The Parks and Recreation Masterplan is getting a 'refresh' after 5 years.
I rather loathe this in that very little of the last plan has been delivered, and this mostly reads as more busy work than will go unfunded/ignored. But in the spirit of it can't hurt to try, here's a link to the first survey:
* Warning, choose your options, you answer questions for Parks or Recreation or both and do a short or long version of the survey, the latter is up to 30 minutes time commitment.
