Maddy's Guide to Playgrounds in Burlington - Wildmere Park

 

Basics:

Date of visit: May 25, 2025

Where can I find it? On Wildmere Ave, curiously

Bathrooms? nope

Parking? just along the road

When open? Daylight hours. 

Review:

I like to think of Wildmere Park as a work in progress. While technically the work was all completed in January of this year, there is a strong mismatch between the available space, and the functional use of that space. The single structure was clearly designed to make highly efficient use of a limited space. While well suited for a New York City postage stamp park, at Wildmere, it looks a little silly. 

This is it. This is the park.

Let us start with the structure itself. The architect appears to have subscribed to the same philosophy as a modern automobile company, which believes that odd-shaped polygons mashed together in strange angles is a forward thinking design. 

Admittedly, no one angle of it looks like another, making it an excellent calibration station for robotic vision systems. In that respect, this park is well future-proofed for our robotic overlords, once they gain control. 

Infinite pathways also mean infinite collisions between kids trying to get from one side to another.

Design choices aside, the structure itself is serviceable and can be a lot of fun, so long as there are not too many kids on it at the same time. Too many appears to be more than one or two at most, before children start running into each other on their way to the nexus point at the top of the slide. 

 

Like a red tie fighter, but less personality.

There are a few swings, but again there is a strong emphasis on consolidation and space saving. Presumably the smaller children can now swing while staring at a parent, instead of at the other kids trying to climb on the structure. Maybe that will improve parent child bonding. 

Two for the price of one

There are two other odd design choices for this particular park. One is the cluster of trees surrounding the flagpole. It looks like there was a paranoid fear that children might see the flagpole and perhaps wish to climb it, and the solution was to obscure it with densely planted and carefully manicured pines all around. 

What the actual what?

But the strangest design choice of all is the placement of the benches. For context, here is a google map overview of the park layout, borders in red are approximate. 

The sand lot on the right side is where the newly constructed structures now reside. But the two benches?

Tucked away in farthest corner, like they've been put into a time out.

Who are these for?

They are far enough away that it is hard to watch kids play without a telescope. They need to install one of those coin operated binoculars next to the benches for them to be of any real use. Normally I would like this as it is the ideal distance for my father to observe play time, but because it is out of earshot, he is not able to respond to my commands when the need arises. Ultimately, I predict these benches will sit, unused. 

A compact park smashed into a spacious opening; I give Wildmere 4 binoculars. 

Madelyn Hope Lewis is the senior playground tester of Lewis Developments, and a connoisseur of playtime activities. When she's not exploring Massachusetts fun time architecture, she can be found scouting out where is exactly "the line" with her parents. 

Maddy's Guide to Playgrounds in Burlington (not today) - Montgomery Park

 

Basics:

Date of visit: April 25th, 2025

Where can I find it? Behind the Dryden Hotel

Bathrooms? nope

Parking? Plenty

When open? Daylight hours. 

Review:

This past spring, I found myself traveling through the looking glass. That is to say, I sat in a car for six hours and desperately needed to get out to a place one might go to burn off some energy. Based on proximity, the optimal location was Montgomery Park in Dryden, NY. 

Through the looking glass indeed!

While parks in Massachusetts appear to prefer either functional abstractionism, or cartoonish animalism, parks in New York state have adopted an approach more akin to Lewis Carrol's Wonderland. With broken lines and non-parallel angles that would give an engineer a headache, children are encouraged to explore, and manifest adventures that thankfully do not include any Jabberwocks. 

The park is sized for individuals both small and smaller, with a section dedicated the tiniest of adventurers. 

I was too big for this section. It made me pine for the days long past when was younger, smaller.

With a standard complement of swings and slides that had sufficient drainage to not retain large puddles at the bottom after a storm, one can while away the hours with a lot of standard playground activities. 

The swings were fine, but too quiet. Not enough squeaking for my tastes.

But there's adventure to be discovered to those who are willing to put in the time to seek it out. One thing to note is that Dryden fully renovated the park in 2016 with the goal of making it a nexus of activities that are to serve as a gateway of visitors coming into Tompkins County. As such, artistic accents abound, including at least one very impressive mural to be found on the climbing wall. 

One can feel like a kaiju, clambering all over the sleepy villa. 

The highlight of the park is the rope bridge that separates the two main structures. Despite being sized for small people, the bridge is just spacious enough to bring a thrill to both a playground player, and the panicked mother watching from the ground!

Word of advice: Do not look down!

Prior to his turn becoming a heel in the world of wrestling, John Cena was a well-known supporter of playground renovations

While off the beaten path for the average Burlingtoner, playground enthusiasts would be well advised to swing by and give Montgomery park a try if they find themselves in the area. With a pavilion for picnics, and a basketball court for older kids, there is an opportunity for anyone to find the fun. My father tried to get us to go to the Dryden Hotel for lunch, but I reminded him that efforts to recapture his misspent youth would not be wasted on me. We went to McDonald's instead, like any self-respecting playgrounder should!

I give Montgomery Park 4 white rabbits:

Madelyn Hope Lewis is the senior playground tester of Lewis Developments, and a connoisseur of playtime activities. When she's not exploring Massachusetts fun time architecture, she can be found scouting out where is exactly "the line" with her parents.