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This Splash Pad Has the Cutest Water Feature Ever

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The perfect summer splash pad for fans of Berczy Park‘s dog fountain

Not all frogs are princes in disguise, and that’s a good thing. Take the cartoonish amphibian in a High Park splash pad in Toronto that’s actually a super fun water feature for kids. You’ll find it installed next to a 100-year-old oak tree, an initially daunting work-around that ended up inspiring the design.

High Park Splash Pad Toronto

This frog fountain made our summer.

Landscape architect Michael Pressutti of MEP Design Inc. paved the 400 square-metre pad (and custom seat wall) with a pigmented, poured-in-place concrete material that respects the tree’s meandering root system. The bespoke water features – like towering flowers (depending on your height), lily pads and a tall spray feature in the form of a tree – soak toddlers frolicking about. Parents can watch the action from the comfort of shaded Adirondak chairs.

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And a win for children in the war against fun

To write about urbanism in Toronto is to live in a constant state of disappointment. It’s not that good things never happen here. It’s just that, too often, our big-ticket urban projects fail to live up to the hype. We get promised a radical new addition to the public realm—a bold initiative to reimagine civic life—and we end up with a condo complex or an outdoor mall. A starchitect gets hired to re-design our most storied museum, and he makes such a hash of things that, fifteen years later, we find ourselves paying to undo his work.

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