Sunken Gardens Park — Attraction in Denver

We visited this park a couple of weeks ago with a picnic lunch and hoping it was a good place for our little one to run around and play. I don't think this park gets cleaned very often. The one picnic table that was in the shade had torn up trash around the base and there was lots of trash in the grass as well. The picnic tables are the poured concrete kind with many coats of paint layered on, and now peeling off - bring a tablecloth. I brushed my hand across the table and got a shard of dried peeling paint under my fingernail, youch! The play structure is older, which is fine, still in decent condition. We visited around 2:30 in the afternoon and there is NO shade on the play structure - the slide was searingly hot, so no play time for baby. And couldn't let her just run around in the shady grass because she would have kept picking up bits of trash. The park borders a fairly busy street, but the trees shield the park from getting too noisy. While we were there quite a few homeless people showed up, all respectful and quiet, hanging out, taking naps in the grass or reading. As we were leaving a group of people showed up with a lot of food for a public picnic. Good to see. :) The really nice thing about this park is the humongous trees. I had to take off one star for the amount of ground trash and half-hearted edging and mowing. With just a little more care this could be...

Beautiful park minus the very territorial squirrel that will come right up to you and try to steal all of your food from your hand or your mouth, or wherever it is. And this is no regular squirrel, this is a giant squirrel. Not a fat squirrel, but a long tailed, rude, and aggressive squirrel! We didn’t even sit down and this squirrel climbed out of the tree that you can see in the picture, that we originally sat under came right up to us and we had to move three times! and there was another couple that had moved even more than we did and they had two dogs! Eventually I used waving flip-flops in the air and loud noises and some vague chasing away to keep it from us... not my proudest moment as a vegan and animal lover. After I had asserted my dominance the squirrel finally retreated and went on to pestering a group of students with a large dog and even the dog couldn’t keep him away! I hope I don’t have to say... don’t come here with kids and a picnic! Call animal control bring the squirrel to the wilderness and he can...

It doesn't offer any "attractions' other than being somewhat of an oasis in a city where high density housing permits seem to be routinely "rubber stamped" , and where quality of life seems to be low on the list of criteria for approving the never ending flood of scrape and build projects. It is truly nice to have some low impact outdoor space that hasn't be commercialized, downsized and destroyed against the wishes of the community. If one wishes to take a break from phones, tablets, game consoles, frustration over the exploding population in town and all sorts of other stressors, it can provide the opportunity to just decompress for a while, and ,maybe, have a face to face conversation with a friend. Passé, low tech, and requiring too much effort? Possibly......