Designing Childrens Play Areas Into Your Landscaping
Every home that has children should have a designated place outside for the them to play in. 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. And if you create a nice enough area, all the kids in the neighborhood will make it a favorite hangout, which could be a mixed blessing. It’s usually fairly easy to add at least a small play area into your garden design plans.
For homes with small children, play areas should be closer to the home. The kids will be visible but not feel too restricted. Somewhere that is in plain view of a kitchen window would be perfect. Many manmade toys – swings, slides, climbing frames and so on – are available for such an area, but young children love to think out their own games and will enjoy being inventive with natural materials. A basic sandbox will keep small children happy for hours. Equip the sandbox with some natural materials like stones and shells. (At a later time, you can make the sandbox into a raised bed.) Along with a small tree with strong branches close to the ground, an old log makes a good climbing frame.
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. Begin with the simple, possibly using some boards nailed to a tree as steps or even a piece of rope to climb up into the trees. Then the tree can be a house, a plane or a pirate ship, as the occasion demands.
A grassy area in your garden can be good for playing in. It could be soft enough to fall down on and often even thick enough to be a hiding spot. 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.
A hard concrete patch will also be invaluable as the children get older. Learning to ride a bike, rollerblade, play jacks, jump rope, and many other childhood games will happen right here. And if you give the kids a sunny place in the yard that’s all their own, who knows, they may even take up gardening.
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