Award winning German playground

One of our school's parents submitted these images of a playground in
Bad Wildungen, her home town in Germany. It's built around the theme of a Mikado game.
All of the play structure posts are made to look like enormous Mikado sticks.

The giant blue bucket in the sand play area is great fun!
     
Rules for safety surfaces in Germany are different from Canada
judging by the grass surface underneath the seesaw swing and the
braided rope swing. The grass and the surrounding shrubs and trees
make the entire space feel very green, lush and welcoming.

Sewer pipe hill

A change in level, no matter how small, will add interest to any landscape.
A small hill to run up and down, and a sewer pipe to crawl through,
will provide endless hours of entertainment. As with any other playground
element, the addition of carefully chosen trees, shrubs and plants,
will make it look great.

Logs for climbing

A criss-cross pattern of large logs can form a low tech climbing
and balancing structure, which at the same time, offers kids an
interesting place to sit. Children's imagination will also turn this
pile of logs into a store, or an appartment complex, a space ship
or a fishing boat.

Fun in a ditch

For a school ground to be a nurturing space for everyone, it should be designed and thought of as a garden.
No great garden is complete without the presence of some form of water.
Forget ponds and fountains for the school setting, but a shallow ditch that fills with rainwater
can be a huge form of entertainment. Dressed up with different sized rocks and
pebbles and surrounded by planting, this ditch becomes a river bed.

Meeting with the Vancouver School Board representative

Today we met with VSB's Grounds Maintenance Supervisor and found out
some very interesting information.

• Sand play areas are supposed to be covered in order to keep out the neighbourhood cats, but an open long-jump pit is absolutely fine and will even be replenished with a fresh load of sand every year by the VSB.
• We are allowed to use logs for climbing ( and sitting ) as long as we comply with the requirements for a safe landing surface.
• We may create a water play area, which collects water from a rainstorm, as long as we make sure the water drains away within a reasonable amount of time.
• We can't designate any area as "soccer field", because each bump in the surface then becomes a liability issue. Higher perimeter fencing can be installed in order to prevent the balls from landing on the street, but no permanent "goals" may be installed.
• The VSB gets regular requests from ( construction ) companies who want to donate their time and expertise to the building of school playground elements. VSB employees are required to do the grounds preparation, but they allow play elements to be installed by the community.
• For any garden, or planted area, to be approved we need to prepare a solid maintenance plan. Support from the new principal and from teachers is a key requirement. Garden care would need to be part of the curriculum.

It seems that some of the rules regarding the use of logs, sand, water and rocks
have loosened considerably, which would give us the option of creating an
"adventure" type play landscape. We could explore the possibility of integrating
traditional playground elements, such as monkey bars and slides into this kind
of playscape.

An outdoor classroom

Depending on the feedback we get from the school's teachers, we may want
to include an outdoor classroom in our design.

The above three projects were done in the Netherlands by Paul van Eerd of

http://www.burobuitenruimte.nl/



                              http://www.greenstonedesign.co.uk/

Water in the playground

This is what our current water play area looks like. The kids LOVE it!
They dig trenches in the gravel, build dams and form lakes.
Is there anything young kids like better than to play with sand and water?
Above the red umbrella you see our sandbox. It's safely locked up and
in its entire five years of existence I don't think it's EVER been opened.
For a while the lid was used as a trampoline, but now it's sagging sadly.

We're dreaming about something a little more sophisticated

Garden City Park in Richmond