A good park is one of the most democratic spaces a community can have. Anyone can walk in. It belongs to everyone. It asks nothing of you except that you show up — to play, to rest, to let your kids run, to sit with your neighbors on a Tuesday afternoon.

DG2 Design designs parks and recreation spaces that earn that trust. Environments that are genuinely accessible, thoughtfully programmed, and built to serve communities for decades — not just the day they open.

The best parks are the ones that reflect the people who use them. That sounds obvious, but it requires real work: surveys, workshops, stakeholder conversations, and the discipline to translate messy, sometimes contradictory community input into a coherent design direction.

When we worked with the City of Kirkwood on Mitchell Park, residents told us clearly what they wanted to protect: the central open lawn, the mature tree canopy, and the intimate neighborhood feel. They also told us what needed to change: drainage problems, aging play equipment, and limited accessibility. The resulting master plan honored both — preserving what the community loved while fixing what was getting in the way.

For Fogerty Park in University City, public engagement revealed a strong desire for environmental education, community gardening, and upgraded recreation infrastructure. Those priorities shaped every decision in the master plan and Phase One construction documents.

Standard playground equipment has its place. But the playgrounds children remember — the ones they talk about at dinner, the ones they drag their parents back to — are the ones that feel like they were designed for them specifically. Spaces with genuine texture, challenge, and surprise.

Kinetic Park in St. Louis County is one example: a phased transformation of a county recreation facility into a universal destination, anchored by an 80,000-square-foot adventure playground with custom play towers, embankment slides, an underground cave, and a water play zone. A universally designed space that works for every age and ability, not just for children who fit a narrow physical profile.

For school playgrounds, we bring the same rigor. Hudson Elementary in Webster Groves received a fully inclusive, grant-funded playground that became a community gathering point after school. Atlas Public Schools in downtown St. Louis got a one-of-a-kind indoor play environment beneath a former parking structure — featuring Berliner spatial nets, DNA climbing towers, and a three-dimensional chess board. The Walter Ambrose Family Center Nature Playscape in Webster Groves replaced aging equipment with a nature-based environment that invites exploration and serves children of all abilities.

We specialize in natural playground design for schools and early childhood programs rooted in Montessori and Reggio Emilia principles. Rather than off-the-shelf structures, these environments use native materials — boulders, logs, willow tunnels, embankment slides, loose parts — to create spaces that change with the seasons and reward curiosity.

Villa di Maria Montessori in Kirkwood, Raintree School’s forest environment (Missouri’s first Reggio Emilia–inspired forest school), Faith Academy’s slope transformation, and the Lemay Child & Family Center’s outdoor learning center all reflect this approach: outdoor spaces that function as genuine extensions of the classroom, not interruptions to it.

Beyond playgrounds, we design the full range of park infrastructure: pavilion areas, sports courts, restroom facilities, accessible pathways, stormwater management systems, parking, and native landscaping. At Meramec State Park in Sullivan, Missouri, we designed two playgrounds — a day-use facility and a campground playground — while carefully coordinating with cultural resources specialists to protect historically sensitive areas of the park.