With the weather starting to warm up and more people looking for opportunities to get outside, Madison Beach & Recreation Department and the Salt Meadow Park Management Committee will host the inaugural Summer Celebration at Salt Meadow Park, 1362 Boston Post Road, on Saturday, June 3 from 1 to 4 p.m.

The event includes a nature walk led by the author of a recently published Long Island Sound nature guide, a concert with the band Shoreline Connection, and sports events. Salt Meadow Park Advisory Committee Chair Alicia Sullivan said the goal of the event is to showcase the park.

“Some people come to the park just to play soccer and then they go home or some people come just to walk in the forest and don’t do anything else,” she said. “We thought, ‘Let’s try and have a little bit of everything going on to show people all of the things they can do there.’”

The Town of Madison officially purchased the park in 2010 for more than $9 million after a long battle over possible development of the land. Formerly the Griswold Airport, the park opened in 2014 and includes 42 acres (half of which is protected by a conservation easement), several athletic fields, a coastal forest, and walking trails.

The ecology of the park is unique along the shoreline as the park includes a 10-acre coastal forest, an ecosystem rich in sassafras, oaks, and other small trees as well as greenbrier. Coastal forests have slowly disappeared along the shoreline due to development. The park also maintains a coastal grassland habitat.

Part of the mission of the park is to protect the local wildlife. Sullivan said the Girl Scouts recently came to the committee with a plan to build bird boxes, which are now around the park.

“I understand...the ecosystem attracts about 300 species of birds so we need to do what we can to enhance and protect it,” she said.

Sullivan said members of the committee will be in attendance at the event and residents are welcome to talk to members about new features they would like to see at the park.

The Summer Celebration on Saturday, June 3 from 1 to 4 p.m. at Salt Meadow Park will be held rain or shine and is free to the public.

As part of the celebration, Pat Lynch, the author of A Field Guide to Long Island Sound, will be hosting a walk from 1:15 to 2:15 p.m. with Jerry Connolly of the Audubon Shop in Madison. Copies of the book will be available for sale, and there will be a book signing as well. Connolly says the walk will emphasize the park’s “truly unique environmental value” as a very rare coastal forest habitat with few invasive plants, along with grasslands and healthy marsh adjacent to the forest. He said Lynch is looking forward to “discussing Salt Meadow’s environmental significance.” For more information about Lynch’s new book, see www.zip06.com/living/20170426/long-island-sound-in-399-pages-700-pictures-and-36-maps.