These days, everyone’s telling you to touch grass. Yet, sometimes your local dog-walking spot, surrounded by dumpsters, high-rise apartments and bus stops, just won’t satisfy that evolutionary desire for the great outdoors.
Your new mental health solution? Meadowbrook Park in Urbana.
Featuring several trails through 80 acres of recreated tallgrass prairie, Meadowbrook is the perfect place for an assortment of hangout options. You can take a romantic walk with a loved one, plan a picnic with friends or get some performative reading done among the many rare and native plants that populate the park.
While the old wooden playground was nostalgic for anyone who grew up in Champaign-Urbana, the new PrairiePlay playground, which the Urbana Park District completed in October 2024, is a great way to get younger children off their iPads and into nature.
No matter where you live in C-U, you won’t regret the short trip to Meadowbrook once you witness its 130 acres of natural beauty. That’s a lot of grass.
