Experience urban nature through a guided sensory walk designed to engage with touch, smell, and sound. This interactive program and hands-on planting activity invites participants to slow down, connect, and explore public space in new ways.
Connect with urban nature in new ways! Join us for an interactive walking tour and activities to stimulate senses such as touch, smell, and sound.
Participants are invited to engage our senses to deepen relationships with our surroundings, the environment, and to each other, through a sensory experience of our public spaces. Towards the end of the session, participants will have the opportunity to plant native wildflower seeds in paper pots to take home to contribute to their own garden or outdoor space!
This summer, The Bentway is teaming up again with the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority to offer free workshops that explore urban nature in our local neighbourhoods, public parks, and community gardens.
What you need to know:
- Youth under age 16 must be accompanied by a caregiver.
- All skills levels are welcome – no experience necessary.
- All materials provided.
- The meeting point is held at Bentway Staging Grounds, an outdoor space under the Gardiner Expressway.
- Participants may be invited to walk over uneven, large rocks on site.
- The event will include short walks through Canoe Landing Park and the surrounding area. The path is paved but does include a small incline.
- Please wear sturdy shoes (closed toe shoes are recommended) and appropriate outerwear.
- During this event, accessible public washrooms are available nearby at The Bentway Studio (55 Fort York Blvd), about a 5-minute walk away.
- Bentway Staging Grounds is accessible to mobility devices; visitors enter onto a series of walkways approx. 7ft wide.
The workshops will begin at Bentway Staging Grounds, a public space pilot that transforms the area below the Gardiner Expressway at Dan Leckie Way into a living laboratory and offers opportunities to learn about urban ecology. The site’s specially designed experimental gardens filter rainwater run-off from the highway above to support the growth of flowering native plant species and benefit the local environment and surrounding neighbourhoods. From there, we’ll explore Canoe Landing Park and City Place to learn more about, and build awareness of, the plant species and urban wildlife thriving in and around the area.
Learn more about Bentway Staging Grounds planters from Horticultural Consultant Isaac Crosby (Brother Nature).
