We tried a park once, a different one from our usual, and it was beautiful. Immaculate, actually. Every hedge clipped, every flowerbed colour-coordinated, every blade of grass the same height. There were no signs saying “don’t walk on the grass,” but you could feel them. My kids stood at the edge of a pristine lawn and looked at me as if to ask permission. We lasted about twenty minutes.
That’s when I realised: not every green space is a nature-study space. And if you live in a city, knowing the difference is the whole game.
You don’t need a forest. You need the right park.
Nature study in the city works. It works in a high-rise neighbourhood, it works in a desert, and it works in a park the size of a football pitch. (If you’re starting from scratch, our beginner’s guide to nature study covers the foundations.) But it does not work in a park that has been manicured to within an inch of its life.
The parks where nature study happens are the slightly scruffier ones. The ones with an untrimmed hedge, a patch of bare earth, a tree that nobody has pruned into a lollipop shape. The ones where your children can crouch in the dirt without you feeling like a security guard is about to appear.
We have two. Safa 2 is small; there’s a coffee shop in the middle that’s usually closed in summer, and you can see your children from just about anywhere you sit. Mushrif Park is bigger, with proper hiking trails and enough rough ground to feel like you’ve left the city. Neither looks like the cover of a Charlotte Mason textbook. They work because they haven’t been tidied to death.
We go early. In summer that means as early as the gates open. It’s fresher, there’s fewer people, and the wildlife is still out. Even in winter we prefer mornings. We’re not there to see people. We’re there to explore. (Other visitors don’t always share the priority. Litter on the paths, music from a speaker, a group loud enough to scatter every bird in earshot. You learn to time your visits.)
If you’re choosing a city park for nature study, look for mess. A little bit of mess is what you need.
What we actually find (it’s not squirrels)
Every nature-study blog post about city wildlife seems to feature squirrels, robins, and the odd raccoon. We live in Dubai. Our curriculum looks different.
My children always go looking for lizards. What they usually find are skinks: smaller, shinier, faster. They’ve become surprisingly good at spotting them against warm stone. There’s also a blue bird at one of our parks that I still haven’t properly identified. (I know. The nature-study dad who can’t name his own local bird.) It’s beautiful, vivid blue, about the size of a starling, and its behaviour reminds me of a magpie: fiercely territorial, chasing off every other bird that comes near. Not humans, thankfully. Just everything else with wings.
None of this is a meadow full of wildflowers. But it’s real, it’s local, and my children know more about skink behaviour than most adults. That counts.
I’ve written before about the time Arthur brought home a caterpillar that turned into a butterfly. That didn’t happen on a country walk. It fell out of a tree at school, in the middle of a city. Nature doesn’t wait for the countryside. It just needs someone paying attention.
The windowsill problem
Most nature-study resources assume you live somewhere temperate with a garden.
Grow a seed on your windowsill. Press autumn leaves. Go for a walk in the woods. All lovely. All completely useless if you live in a place where it’s 45 degrees outside for four months of the year and the nearest wood is a landscaped median strip.
I don’t say this to complain. I say it because I’ve watched parents in cities (not just here; in New York, in Singapore, in any big metropolis) quietly assume that nature study isn’t really for them. That it’s a thing for families with a forest at the end of the lane and a potting shed.
It isn’t. Nature study is weather. It’s insects on a wall. It’s the bird that won’t let any other bird near its tree. It’s the wind direction and why it matters. It’s asking why that particular weed grows through a crack in a car park and nothing else does. A seed on a windowsill is a fine starting point, but it’s not the whole subject, and treating it as though it is makes city families feel like they’re doing a lesser version of the real thing.
They’re not. Different wildlife is still wildlife. A park is still an ecosystem. And a child who can identify a skink is doing nature study whether or not there’s a forest in the postcode.
Free Pack. “Want a place to start? Our free Nature Explorer Starter Pack gives you 10 printable pages for your next park visit. No forest required.”
Five things to try at your nearest city park
These all work in any climate, any city, any size of green space.
1. The ten-minute sit (Ages 3+ · zero prep). Find a bench or a patch of ground. Sit for ten minutes and write down or draw everything you notice: birds, insects, sounds, wind, shadows. The first two minutes are boring. The next eight are not. Younger children can tally (“How many birds did we see?”) while older ones journal.
2. The ugly corner (Ages 4+ · zero prep). Find the least maintained part of the park. The bit behind the bins, the untrimmed hedge, the cracked path. That’s where the insects are. Bring a magnifying glass if you have one; eyes work fine if you don’t.
3. Sound mapping (Ages 5+ · bring paper and a pencil). Draw a circle on a page. Put an X in the middle. That’s you. Close your eyes, and every time you hear a sound, mark roughly where it came from on the circle. After five minutes, open your eyes and see what your sound map looks like. Works brilliantly in cities because there’s more to hear than you’d expect.
4. The same tree, every visit (Ages 3+ · zero prep). Pick one tree and visit it every time you go to the park. Watch it across months. What’s changed? What lives in it? What’s on the ground beneath it? This is slow science, and it’s some of the best nature study you can do because it teaches observation over time, not just a single snapshot.
5. Weather station (Ages 4+ · a stick and some string). Push a stick into the ground and tie a piece of string or a light ribbon to the top. Which way does it blow? Is it the same direction as last time? Pair this with cloud watching and you’ve got a weather lesson from a park bench.
A few things parents ask
Can you really do nature study without a garden?
Yes. A park, a pavement, a balcony, even a car park will do. The subject is nature, not gardens. If there’s weather, there’s a lesson. If there’s an ant, there’s a lesson. The only thing you actually need is the habit of looking.
What if the park near me is too small or too urban?
Smaller is often better. A single tree visited regularly teaches more than a forest visited once. And “too urban” is a matter of perspective. Pigeons have a social hierarchy, pavement weeds are survivors, and the drainage grate is someone’s front door. The question is never whether nature is there. It’s whether you’ve noticed it yet.
What age should we start?
As young as you like. A two-year-old crouching to watch an ant is already doing nature study. They just don’t know it has a name.
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From the shop: Our Nature Walk Cards are designed for exactly this: small, practical prompt cards you can take to any park, any city, any weather. Each card gives your child one thing to look for, one thing to do, and one thing to record. Ages 3–7.
Some of our best nature-study mornings have started on a park bench in the middle of a city, at seven o’clock, before anyone else arrived. No worksheets, no plan, no forest. Just a skink on a warm rock and a child who was paying attention.
Go find your park.