Nov 22 2009
Planning A Play Area In Your Landscaping
Every home with children should have an area somewhere outdoors for them to play. There are a lot of rewards for creating an outdoor play area for the children: they are happy, parents are happy knowing the children are safe, and the rest of the garden is usually left undisturbed. It may turn out that your area could become a favorite hangout of the neighborhood kids, which might be a mixed blessing. It’s usually fairly easy to add at least a small play area into your garden design plans.
For small kids, a play area should be closer to the home so the children can be visible but not feel too restricted. An area that is visible from a the most used areas of the house is good. There are a lot of toys that you can go out and buy for play areas. However, young kids can often have as much fun creating their own games using nothing more than rocks, dirt, and other natural objects. A basic simple sandbox, with cover when not being used to keep neighborhood critters out, will keep small children busy for hours. Place some simple materials like small stones in the sandbox. (Later, you can turn the sandbox into a raised garden.) An old log makes a good climbing frame, as can quite a small tree, especially if it has strong branches not too far from the ground.
Older kids like to play a little more away from the house. However, the play area should still be a highly visible safe spot that is intentionally designed into the front yard or backyard landscaping plans. Older children love to use their imagination, so don’t provide them with a treehouse immediately. Start simply, possibly with some board steps nailed to a tree or a rope ladder up into the branches of a tree. Then the tree can become anything that comes to the imagination. A plane, boat, castle, house, or almost anything.
A patch of rough grass in your garden can be great for informal play - soft enough to fall on, perhaps even long enough to hide in. If this idea doesn’t work with the rest of your landscaping ideas, you might try bark chunks or chips as a surface under play equipment which can work as a cushion for those inevitable falls.
An area of concrete will also be a well used spot as the kids grow up. Learning to ride a bike, rollerblade, play jacks, jump rope, and many other childhood games will happen right here. And those other skills may even include gardening, if you give them a small, sunny place of their very own.
