We get enquiries from a lot of venues. Most want something that looks like a playground. A few want something that actually performs like one. Adventure Alley was the second kind. Jordana Leventhal came in with a clear brief and a clear vision — a 16-foot tree at the centre of everything, loft at the top, slide coming down, and nothing that looked like it came from a catalogue. That's when the conversation gets interesting.
We're a furniture company out of Moorefield, Ontario. We built our reputation on early childhood pieces — tables, chairs, storage, loose parts. Fern Studio is what happens when those skills get applied at a different scale. This project is a good example of what that looks like in practice.
Adventure Alley sits inside Toronto's Galleria Development at Dufferin and Dupont — a neighbourhood that, until September 2025, didn't have much for young families. The owners, Amanda Neves and Sebastian Kennedy, wanted to change that. Their concept was an indoor playground that also worked as a proper gathering space for parents: somewhere to work, to talk, to have a coffee, while keeping an eye on kids who are genuinely absorbed in something.
They brought in Jordana Leventhal of LV Interior Design Studio to design the space. Leventhal, who lives five minutes away and would become one of Adventure Alley's first regulars, brought both professional rigour and a personal stake: the space had to be good enough for her own daughters. It was a brief that sharpened everything.
The centrepiece: a 16-foot custom tree
At the heart of the design is a 16-foot custom tree structure — the kind of piece that defines a space the moment you walk in. It was the centrepiece of Leventhal's concept from the beginning, and it required a fabricator who could execute in solid wood at a scale and complexity that goes well beyond standard furniture production.
That's where Fern Studio came in.
The tree combines a sculptural trunk form with a structural loft platform at elevation and a slide that brings children back to ground level. The challenge isn't just the height — it's the intersection of three demands that rarely live comfortably together: it has to be structurally sound for commercial use, visually warm and organic in form, and built to a finish level that holds up against daily wear by children aged one to twelve.
The fabrication happened in Moorefield, where Fern Kids manufactures its furniture line. Working in solid hardwood and Baltic birch — the same materials we use for early childhood classroom pieces — the tree was built, assembled, and finished before installation. The loft platform was engineered for load, the slide integrated into the structure, and the organic branching of the trunk was hand-shaped to achieve the sculptural quality Leventhal's design called for.
"By blending Fern Studio's craftsmanship with Jordana Leventhal's design vision, Adventure Alley becomes more than a play zone — it's an immersive environment that balances function, creativity, and a true sense of wonder."— Fern Studio project description, studio.fernkids.com
What surrounds the tree: the full Fern scope
The tree is the centrepiece, but the Fern Studio scope extended across the full play environment. Surrounding it, Leventhal designed a series of activity stations that invite different kinds of exploration — a pegboard wall for hands-on sensory discovery, interactive busy boards, and a kinetic sand table. Each was fabricated by our team to the same spec as the tree: commercial durability, natural materials, a finish that wears well.
Custom tables and chairs complete the space. This is familiar territory for Fern Kids — we've built thousands of early childhood tables and chairs for daycares, Montessori programmes, and classrooms across Canada. The Adventure Alley pieces were designed to Leventhal's palette: natural wood warmth, slightly oversized proportions for comfort, scaled for the one-to-twelve age range the space serves.
The design language throughout prioritises nature-inspired materials and Scandinavian restraint. Leventhal's intent was a space that felt calm rather than overwhelming — colour used purposefully, wood creating warmth, forms repeating throughout to create visual coherence. The Fern pieces needed to support that language, not fight it.
The design philosophy: child-led discovery at scale
What made this project interesting to work on was how seriously Leventhal had thought through the developmental intent of each zone. "A child's curiosity never follows a straight line," she has said of the design — and the space is built around that reality. Different areas invite different modes: active play, sensory exploration, imaginative scenarios, quieter discovery. Children move through it according to their own internal logic, not a prescribed circuit.
That maps directly to what we believe about early childhood environments at Fern Kids. The furniture and structures in a child's environment are not neutral. They either open possibilities or close them. The Adventure Alley brief was, at its core, about opening as many possibilities as possible — within a space that parents could relax in and a team could actually manage.
Leventhal also prioritised open sightlines throughout the main room: parents seated at the perimeter can maintain visual contact with their children at all times. And it works the other way — cubbies and openings through the play structures mean kids can peek back at their parents while in the middle of play. That kind of spatial reciprocity is something you have to design intentionally. It doesn't happen by accident.
Local production as a project value
From the start, Amanda and Sebastian wanted Adventure Alley to be locally made. That commitment showed up across every supplier decision: the central mural was painted by Toronto-based artist Justin Broadbent; the lighting came from Montreal and Toronto-based Luminaire Authentik; and the wood furniture and play structures came from us, in Moorefield, Ontario.
This matters beyond the narrative. Local fabrication means shorter lead times, site visits during production, and a fabricator who can respond to the unexpected — which always happens on custom projects at this scale. It means the installer who sets the tree in place is the same team that built it. It means accountability that a catalogue order can't replicate.
For Fern Studio, it's also a demonstration of what Canadian craftsmanship can do when it's given a brief that demands it.
The press response
Adventure Alley opened in September 2025. Designlines covered the project in November 2025, calling it "a community hub for kids and parents." The feature — written by Sophie Sobol, with photography by Dan Molina — documented both the spatial design and the community intent behind the project.
The Adventure Alley project also appeared in Interior Design Magazine's Hot Shots 2026 feature on LV Interior Design Studio — recognition of the calibre of work Leventhal brought to the project.
For our part, we're proud of what the Fern Studio team built. A 16-foot tree in the middle of a Toronto playground isn't something we do every week. But it's something we were made to do.
- →Custom play structures at commercial scale require fabricators who understand both structural engineering and finish quality — not a choice between the two
- →Local production enables the kind of iteration and site-specific problem-solving that catalogue suppliers can't offer
- →Child-led design philosophy — allowing different modes of play to co-exist in one space — produces better outcomes than activity-directed layouts
- →Scandinavian-informed restraint (soft palette, natural wood, calm not overwhelming) is a strong frame for high-use children's commercial spaces
- →The Fern Kids furniture line and Fern Studio custom builds now operate across the full spectrum — from a single classroom table to a 16-foot tree installation