Kenan Center shows off expanded Daisy's Adventure Garden

Jacob Fries, Lockport Union-Sun & Journal, N.Y.
·2 min read

Oct. 1—The Kenan Center celebrated the grand opening of its newly expanded Daisy's Adventure Garden on Friday.

Assistant Director Parish Gibbons said that the celebration is due to the completion of phases one and two of the construction, which has been going on for three years.

"This is an outdoor educational play-space for youth and people of all ages," said Gibbons. "It's inspired by many places in Lockport like the canal, the community market farmstand and other things that remind us of what Lockport is all about."

The garden is named after the first cow owned by the Kenan family, and was even built on the grounds that used to be her pasture. The park even has a cow-shaped couch, or "cow-ch" at its center in honor of Daisy.

"William Keenan Jr. was always very proud of Daisy, and it carried into the Kenan center logo which is a daisy," Gibbons said. "This place introduces that cow back to the Lockport Community, because a lot of people forget that the Kenan Center campus was once an orchard, and had animals."

Some of the new additions include the balance berm, the meditation hill, the storytelling stage, the talk tubes, and the lock-tender playhouse.

"We wanted to pay tribute to Lockport, even our playhouse and slide are a replica of the lock tower which can be seen along the Erie Canal by the Flight-of-Five."

The garden is also home to Lockport's mural for the Paint-by-Numbers Mural Project which has murals in every town in Niagara County.

Gibbons said that work on the garden cost approximately $160,000, and was funded through several different grants. Among its many other grants, The Kenan Center was especially thankful for their first one which was a playground grant from Kaboom!

The first phase of the construction was done last summer, and involved laying the foundations for the garden, obtaining sponsorships for it, installing the sound garden and placing the Daisy "cow-ch." Over the past year the stage, play bridge, mural balance berm, and meditation hill were added.

The ribbon cutting was also to celebrate the opening of a second Montessori Pre-School classroom in the Kennan Arena, which has doubled the space available to them.

After the ribbon was cut by Keenan Center Board of Governors President Scott DeLuca, and state Sen. Robert Ortt, DeLuca invited children from the Montessori school who were present to take small pumpkins that were lined up along the stage.

"This is a great space for children to come and learn through play," DeLuca said during the ceremony. "Not only do we achieve that through our Montessori program, but now we can achieve it for our community right here in our backyard."