The Pumpkin Patch Newport Heights Can Walk To Turns 50

One night in the early 1970s, two Newport Harbor High students went down to the Back Bay, caught a bunch of frogs and toads, and let them go in a creek their classmates had dug by hand. The same group of students had already dug 18-inch trenches for the first irrigation lines and the posts for a telephone-pole fence. That creek still runs behind the high school's athletic fields. On Sunday, October 18, the pumpkin patch will be set up near the top of it.

The Environmental Nature Center bills this year's event as its 50th Annual Fall Faire & Pumpkin Patch. It runs from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and admission is free. The address is 1601 E. 16th Street. Read the history and the 2026 schedule side by side and they match. The ENC's biggest day of the year still works the way the ground was first shaped. Neighbors do the labor, the money comes in small amounts, and the people who do best are the ones who walk over.

A Gully Behind the Kings Drive Backyards

Robert House was in his seventeenth year teaching biology at Newport Harbor High in 1972. He later described the site as a gully running between the high school and the private property on Kings Drive. It served as a dumping area for the bus garage and was overgrown with "non-descript vegetation spilling over sloping back yards." The open stretch from Sixteenth Street behind the athletic fields was a weed patch left over from an old agriculture program. Stakes where students had once tethered cows, horses and sheep were still in the ground.

The soil that built the place came from next door. When the high school dug out its Olympic-size pool, the dirt was piled up to form a buffer from the athletic fields. House and fellow teacher John Echternach saw a second use for it. A north-facing slope and a south-facing slope could show students how plants adapt to sun exposure, and one hill could serve as a natural amphitheater overlooking a waterfall.

The plan called for planting twelve of California's plant communities so visitors could walk through desert, chaparral, forest and streamside habitats in one afternoon. The quotes from landscapers came in over budget, so the school turned the work into coursework.

"The first year we had four classes of about twenty-five students that met in the ENC to perform various tasks."

One of their first jobs, House wrote, was building the 300-foot recycling stream with two ponds.

The name came from the community as well. Nancy Leland and Karen Kovach of the Junior Ebell Club approached the school district about supporting environmental education. The Junior League joined soon after, and the Junior Ebell group chose the name Environmental Nature Center. The organizers then went to the Kiwanis, Lions and Rotary Clubs for support. A Rotary logo still appears among the 2026 Faire's supporting sponsors.

How the Faire Still Pays for the Place

The Faire is the ENC's largest fundraiser of the year, and its pricing works much like those early student work crews did. Entry is free, with donations welcome at the gate. Once you're inside, most activities carry what the ENC calls "nominal costs." Instead of one ticket price, the day runs on a lot of small purchases:

• Craft Crawl. It costs $5 per child and includes a reusable Earthpack bag plus a hand stamp good for five crafts set up along the trails.
• Pumpkins. The patch sits in the "Log Area" near the "Top of the Stream," with live music from the Sweetwater Creek Band. Anyone who renews or starts an ENC membership at the Faire gets a free pumpkin.
• Savor OC tastes. Local restaurants sell bites throughout the day, and those purchases support the ENC's education programs.
• The online auction. Bidding runs from October 13 until 3:30 p.m. on Faire day. Items include a felt-leaf wreath, a wine tasting, a native-landscape consultation, a photography session and an original painting.

Volunteers still do much of the work. The Craft Crawl crafts are run by ENC Nature Preschool teachers and community volunteers. Signups for volunteer shifts are open on the ENC site.

All of those small purchases add up. ENC's press materials say the 2023 Faire raised $55,000, and the 2024 Faire drew nearly 4,000 people and raised nearly $45,000.

Who Is Feeding Everyone This Year

The 2026 Savor OC list has eleven names so far, and the ENC says more may be added before the Faire.

The ENC also asks guests to treat the day as a Zero Waste Event and bring their own reusable cup, plate and utensils. Each person who arrives with a full set is entered in a drawing for a $50 gift certificate. It can be used at either ENC gift shop or toward an ENC or ENC Tucker Nature Camp. Carrying your own dishes is a lot easier when you walked over from home than when you parked several blocks away.

The Fire Circle Stage, Hour by Hour

The stage schedule repeats every hour, so you can plan the walk over around one act and still catch most of the day.

The schedule opens and closes with ENC's own naturalists and animals. Music and dance from local groups fill the hours in between.

Getting There on Foot

The ENC's own Faire page says it directly: "Parking is usually tight! If you live close by, why not walk or ride your bike?" With nearly 4,000 visitors at the 2024 Faire, that warning makes sense. Faire volunteers are directed to park on 15th Street. For anyone already living on the Heights side of the high school, the trip is the same one those student crews made fifty years ago, and nobody has to circle for a parking space.

Here's one way to plan the weekend:

1. Before Friday. Check the auction once bidding opens October 13.
2. Friday, October 16, 2–5 p.m. ENC members get the pumpkin patch to themselves for a preview, with time for photos before Sunday's crowd.
3. Sunday, 10 a.m. Walk over with your own cup and plate, get coffee from KEAN, and catch Harper's reptiles at 10:30.
4. Midday. Bring the kids on the $5 Craft Crawl, then eat somewhere between SOHO TACO and Zov's.
5. Before 3 p.m. Choose a pumpkin near the top of the stream and walk it home.

Fifty Years On

The site has grown well past the original gully. ENC says its learning center was the first LEED Platinum building in Orange County, an honor it lists for 2008. Its 10,380-square-foot nature preschool, also LEED Platinum, opened in fall 2019 on an adjoining parcel. In spring 2026, the Association for Environmental & Outdoor Education named the ENC its 2026 Environmental Education Organization of the Year.

The way the place is run hasn't changed much. In September, Stu News Newport ran the save-the-date with this line: "For 50 years, fall at the Environmental Nature Center (ENC) has meant one thing – Fall Faire." House wrote that the ENC was built gradually, as the money came in, and that many of the students who planted it later came back with their own children. Today the eucalyptus has been replaced by sycamores, oaks and island flora, and the local Audubon chapter has recorded more than 130 bird species there. The ENC's history page tells House's full account in his own words, and it's worth reading before Sunday.

Later in the month, the city's free 9th Annual Halloween Spooktacular takes over Mariners Park & VJ Community Center at 1300 Irvine Ave. on Saturday, October 24, from 3 to 6 p.m. The city calendar listing has the details.

At bouHAUS, we're drawn to places built by the people who live around them, and a native-plant preserve shaped by hand from pool dirt behind a row of Kings Drive backyards is one of the best examples in Newport Beach. If you'd like to know how the streets you'll walk on Sunday are valuing your own home this fall, ask us for a Home Value. We're glad to talk it over before or after the pumpkin patch.