Grantham Recreation staged Hearts in the Park scavenger hunt at Brookside Park

Grantham Recreation staged a scavenger-style event called Hearts in the Park, placing 12 wooden hearts around Brookside Park for residents to find between Feb. 14 and Feb. 21, 2026. The small program ran through Valentine’s Day week and was described in materials as a light, family-friendly winter activity.

Organizers with Grantham Recreation set the physical markers, twelve painted wooden hearts, around Brookside Park to create a self-guided hunt for families and neighbors. The event’s scavenger format invited participants to move through outdoor space at their own pace; the activity window of Feb. 14–21 made the park a focus of neighborhood activity during a typically quiet winter week.

From a public health perspective, Hearts in the Park offered an outdoor, low-contact option for family recreation. By staging the activity across Brookside Park rather than inside community buildings, Grantham Recreation provided a way for parents and children to gather while keeping time outdoors during cold-weather weeks, with the program concluding on Feb. 21, 2026.

The event also highlighted municipal recreation’s role in equitable access to safe public space. Grantham Recreation’s decision to use Brookside Park as the site put programming into a familiar local green space and created a short, accessible activity for local families. The twelve-heart layout meant the event could accommodate multiple small groups spread across the park rather than concentrating people in one spot.

Hearts in the Park was a modest example of how local recreation departments can use simple, inexpensive installations to activate parks. Grantham Recreation’s placement of twelve wooden hearts in Brookside Park during Feb. 14–21, 2026, drew attention to the park during a week when outdoor family programming is often scarce, and it wrapped up tonight as scheduled.

Future programming choices by Grantham Recreation may build on this model; for now, the wooden hearts installed at Brookside Park have completed their run, leaving behind a clear, measurable effort, 12 hearts, one week, that connected families with a neighborhood park during late winter.