I met an officer from a UK local authority last week who bemoaned the plethora of pirate ships that had gone in all over her county in the last 24 months. With apologies to my friends in the equipment industry, pirate ships are expensive, fixed, unchanging pieces of kit, and some can be problematic in terms of entrapment issues as described by John. A landscape led play site costs the same to maintain, less to install, and the kids can make anything of it as they wish.
In this year of bio-diversity more needs to be made of playable sensory planting and the cost effective nature of natural play provision. We need some equipment and to do more than to plonk random 'natural' items - smooth boulders and peeled logs - in a space, but not much more.
Today I've been asked to design dinosaur- themed sensory planting for a play area in a SSSI site.
ReplyDeleteHardy planting to create a 'jungle' effect is inexpensive, and low maintenance. By being evergreen you don't have a dump of leaves each autumn to deal with. The palms and trees shed small amounts of leaves all year round, providing a constant litter layer, ideal for digging around in.