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Childrens imagination garden?

Hi,

i have a toddler and another one (or two) on the way and I really want to get the garden overhauled this winter for next year but I want it to be completely for the children without sticking up climbing frames everywhere.

The main task will be flattening a large retained bed, level the ground and stick up several raised beds which looks very uniformed and nice in my mind but what could I do to it to make the kids want to play there not just when they're stealing raspberries?

Imagination play is great so dens and stepping stones and things but if anyone has any big ideas of things that would need to be incorporated before the beds go down rather than added on at the end then that is the kind of thing I'm looking for.

Anything really, not even vegetable bed related. Anything incorporated into the foundations of a functional garden that the kids loved.

Thanks.

Posts

  • DovefromaboveDovefromabove Posts: 88,138

    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





  • The Alan Titchmarsh prograsmme, Love your garden had some good ideas on it last night.  "Hidden door to a den",  Hidden sandpit and a hidden water game.   It will be on iplayer.

    I also like things like bird tables and bird nesting boxes and insect houses which children can get involved and engaged with.   Something like this:

    https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQbaLun7jBBfy9nGgsTL4HP_dXkn89INRGUfswy16BVRiWhElIJUQ

  • Katherine WKatherine W Posts: 410

    I heartily second Dove's sugggestion of willow den. I want to be a kid again and have one. Hell, I'll make one even if I am 38 years old!

    And some sort of "labirynth" for playing hide and seek.

    If the garden is very big you can do it with Bamboo (I know, I know, everybody start screaming at me, but there are small non invasive bamboos too). else perhaps with tall stout grasses? (not pampas grass, that stuff is worse than barbed wire).  Or quick growing hedging material, like Lonycera nitida, if you don't mind trimming it often.

    In a large garden I helped to plan years ago for a customer we laid out such a mini labyrinth, circular, about 8 m across, with the idea that once the children were grown all the plants in the middle would be removed and the outer circle would become a "secret" seating area. Very romantic. In that case money was not an issue (sigh) so it was sort of ready planted with well grown eleagnus bushes.

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