Tatum's Garden is a community-built miracle in Salinas' Sherwood Park.

Tatum is almost 4 years old now, and was born with Spina Bifida, a common birth defect of the spinal cord that may result in weakness or paralysis of the legs or paralysis, among other health problems. The disease necessitates that little Tatum use a wheelchair a get around.

Any trials that arose out of that were compounded when her parents, Shawn and Amanda Bakker, discovered that there was no fully accessible and inclusive playground within a 200-mile radius of their Salinas home, despite the fact that in Monterey County there are 6,800 kids enrolled in special education. They took Tatum to an accessible park called Matteo's Dream in Concord. Two hours away from their home of Salinas. It was a pivotal moment for the family.

In a video interview posted online, Tatum's father Shawn says, "It took 2 1/2 years for [Tatum] to feel like a kid, how she's supposed to feel."

So Shawn and Amanda set about to fundraise for and build the area's first fully accessible and inclusive playground in Sherwood Park. Community businesses and citizens showed up in force to help build it. Tatum's Garden, a wonderland of accessible play, opened Dec. 8, 2013.

"It's unlike any other place in Monterey County right now," says Amanda Bakker, who is the president of the Tatum's Garden Foundation. "It is a beautiful, family oriented park."

She describes a list of its amenities. It's custom built and fenced in, contains a picnic area, is constructed of durable plastic lumber, the ground is level and made from poured rubber. It contains playhouses, a barn, a giant broccoli treehouse with a two-story wheelchair ramp, swings, slides, monkey bars, a xylophone. There are play features for fully abled as well as disabled kids because Tatum has two able-bodied siblings, so the idea is for both to play together. There is signage in braille and in sign language, accessible bathrooms. It's open seven days a week, sun-up to sundown. It's a wonderland.

It's holding it's first big event since the December grand opening this Saturday 11am-3pm in Sherwood Park (at the corner of E. Bernal and Maryal Drive), an event they're calling their Spring Fling. Although there are opportunities to for people to donate to covering the construction costs (which they are close to doing), and people can purchase "I Love Tatum's Garden" t-shirts or personalized bricks ($100) and pickets ($50), Amanda says that more fundraiser-focused event are coming later this year, and that Spring Fling is more a chance for the community to come and enjoy arts and crafts, an Easter egg hunt and lawn games, face-painting, healthy snacks. A play date for everyone.

Amanda says the the mission of the Tatum's Garden Foundation is three-fold: "To maintain Tatum's Garden, to host or sponsor events in the community promoting inclusionary play, and to either retrofit existing parks with more accessible equipment or possibly construct new parks in the future."

"[Tatum's Garden] has reached more people than we thought it could."

Families have come from Paso Robles to San Jose and beyond. So it makes sense that they're looking to expand their vision to be more inclusive. This Saturday (rain cancels) should make it plain for everyone to see that this kind of play, for all kids, is a worthy goal to work toward.