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Walnut Grove park gets new facilities for kids, community

Garden plots and a covered area for study are among recent upgrades
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Janine Jackson, left, a teacher at Dorothy Peacock Elementary, and Victoria Woelders, a former local teacher who now works for the Ministry of Education, unveiled the new sign at McClughan Park in Walnut Grove. Community garden plots are behind them. (Matthew Claxton/Langley Advance Times)

Upgrades to a Walnut Grove park that will allow for outdoor education and community gardening were officially unveiled on Monday, March 6.

McClughan Park now sports a large covered picnic area, 28 new garden plots, including two for nearby elementary schools, a playground, and a new latrine toilet.

The upgrade project was pushed primarily by staff from nearby Dorothy Peacock Elementary and Gordon Greenwood Elementary, including Victoria Woelders and Janine Jackson.

“I feel like we’re leaving a legacy,” Woelders, the McClughan Park Committee lead, said.

The McClughan Park Committee was formed in 2019 and aimed to revitalize the park, located on 204th Street just north of 90th Avenue.

Working with a host of other community groups, volunteers, local businesses, and the Langley Environmental Partners Society (LEPS), the group raised $20,000 and brought Langley Township on board.

There were a few delays, noted LEPS executive director Nichole Marples, thanks to the worldwide COVID pandemic.

But the project is now complete.

The new covered picnic area will be useful for outdoor education classes from the new school. Teachers there will now have more access to the nearby Yorkson Creek, where they run environmental education programs and teach kids about salmon habitat and native plants.

Marples said the community garden spaces are all rented and there is already a waiting list.

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Matthew Claxton

About the Author: Matthew Claxton

Raised in Langley, as a journalist today I focus on local politics, crime and homelessness.
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