News Blog

Landscape Architect - Adam White shares his insights into creating and maintaining good nature play

“With many wave one Play Builder and Pathfinder projects having now been completed for several months, the teams responsible for maintenance are increasingly under pressure to ensure the schemes are kept looking as good as they did on opening day. However we should remind ourselves as to what has inspired the playful landscape movement in the UK, it was those schemes full of excitement, challenges, risk and adventure in mainland Europe and in particular Frieburg in Germany. Return to those photos and you will see these schemes also have areas of dead turf, water puddling and random graffiti, but despite this they still offer great play value, children only see the fun and excitement in a well designed play space.

It is really important to remember we are not creating RHS Show Gardens but children’s public play spaces. Just as in mainland Europe not all the turf will establish, graffiti tagging will take place, some planting my get nicked or even used as missiles when being thrown around the space! We need to step back and consider the balance between maintaining a space so it still looks maintained but also accepting the fact that it’s okay for it to look lived-in and used. That is not to say design quality and genuine public engagement are not important, they are the vital ingredients to creating any public open space.

Regular maintenance such as litter picking, bin emptying, sweeping and raking sand and pruning of shrubs are all standard activities and need to take place on weekly even on a daily basis. In addition to this here are a few tricks that can be considered at design and delivery stage to help the scheme establish.

• Lay the turf as early as possible in the construction process.
• Don’t have steep gradients where the turf won’t get water or even have the chance to put down it’s roots.
• Contain the site for 4 weeks prior to opening to allow the planting and turf to bed in.
• Use 10 litre shrubs and densely plant up each bed.
• Take the local children to choose the boulder and planting.
  Encourage the establishment of a ‘friends’ of support group"

Adam White is an award winning chartered Landscape Architect and CABE Space Enabler. He is the pioneer of the RHS Gold and BBC peoples Choice Award Playscape design approach which promotes challenges, nature and risk in a playful landscape whilst being complimented by well designed play equipment.
He is co author of the latest publication to come from Play England, Nature Play: Maintenance Guide