New Harvest Park

Knox County’s 43rd and newest park is somewhat of an oddity — right off a noisy road and carved into a steep hillside with a huge parking lot. Nevertheless, New Harvest Park off New Harvest Lane (at the former site of the Farmer’s Market) was still the happening place to be on a sunny, fall Friday afternoon. The first themed park in Knox County, New Harvest Park’s playground resembles a farm and barn, and the splashpad is shaped like a riverboat, says Doug Bataille of Knox County Parks and Recreation. The design of the park is to keep with the chosen farm theme that a weekly farmer’s market will play into as well. Bataille says the Parks and Rec department is currently working with University of Tennessee’s Agriculture extension to have the farmers market — which will most likely be held on a weekday evening — ready for spring 2008.

The 43-acre park has a quarter-mile walking trail around a small pond, and up the hillside behind the picnic pavillion/ampitheater (They have graffi ti-proof picnic tables!) is a smooth trail with a gentle incline that’d be a good gluteal workout for rollerbladers, though the path’s brevity would make doing laps a necessity.

The park’s landscape still has a way to grow — most of the sapling trees are still staked down, and the hillside is an iridescent green from its covering of grass seed netting. But one main draw in the meantime is the 2,400 square-foot public meeting space that’s available for free to community groups once a month, and for rent the rest of the time, as is the picnic pavillion. Bataille says the only time the picnic pavillion won’t be available for rent is when the park begins hosting concerts and festivals in the spring.