Natural Playgrounds for Children: Advantages and Problems

Natural and Traditional Playgrounds
A growing trend in North America and some other parts of the world is the creation of natural playgrounds for children. These playgrounds contain elements that are part of nature or are made from natural materials, such as trees, shrubs, grass, logs, stones, sand, water, wooden tree houses, and wood chip trails. They contain space for children to run and play as well as natural and prefabricated materials which are movable and can be manipulated. The materials enable children to construct new objects and express their creativity.
Traditional playgrounds are often very colorful, although some are monotone and have a sterile environment. While these playgrounds help students to develop a variety of skills, the emphasis is on developing gross motor skills. Natural playgrounds help children to develop other beneficial behaviors in addition to physical skills. These behaviors include social skills, cooperation, and the ability to solve problems. In addition, natural playgrounds stimulate a child's imagination and creativity more than a traditional playground. Natural playgrounds may also help children to appreciate nature and to learn about their environment.
Creating a Natural Playground in a Park
Play is a vital activity for healthy child development. In addition to being fun, appropriate play activities enable students to develop physical fitness, muscle coordination, balance, and confidence. Play also enables them to develop appropriate behaviors that will be useful to them throughout their lives. It often improves their academic performance as well.

Components of Traditional Playgrounds
A traditional playground contains manufactured equipment made of metal or brightly colored plastic. The equipment includes climbers, monkey bars, slides, swings, and teeter-totters (seesaws). The playground is fun for children to visit and is a good place for developing physical skills. However, it's accompanied by risk, especially for young children. Using much of the equipment in a traditional playground increases a child's elevation and may result in injuries if he or she falls. Playground designers sometimes try to reduce this risk by having a thick wood chip surface under the play structures. Although this lessens the risk, it's still there.
Improving the safety of a traditional playground can create problems. If designers decrease the height of the equipment in order to increase safety, the playground is often considered to be boring by older children. In addition, in the safer playground the children may lose the sense of accomplishment that they can get from climbing to a high height and from swinging on monkey bars.
In general, risk is lower in a natural playground than in a traditional one, although this isn't always true. There is another major difference between a traditional playground and a natural one. The traditional area provides ready-made items for a child's entertainment. An important goal of a natural play area is to stimulate children to create some of their own items for entertainment. Creating new objects can give children a sense of achievement.
Fun for Children
Components of a Natural Play Area
A natural playground is a small piece of nature (or sometimes of modified or replicated nature) which contains a variety of different mini-environments. It usually contains trees and other plants—or plant materials—such as shrubs, tree stumps, and logs. The playground may contain open, grassy areas as well as areas shaded by trees. It generally includes spaces appropriate for active play, creative play, and quiet time.
A natural playground often contains water in some form. A sandy or rocky area beside a water channel is a common component of the playgrounds that I've explored. The terrain in the playground is generally varied and may contain one or more hills. Trails are usually winding instead of following a straight and regular path.
A successful natural play area contains lots of movable objects that children can manipulate and use for construction projects. Examples of natural movable objects include sand, water, twigs, branches, logs, pebbles, rocks, and fallen leaves. Prefabricated items like buckets, spades, bits of plastic piping, string, and fabric may also be provided for children to used in their creative work. The idea is to provide the necessary tools for the children to create objects formed in their imagination, providing them with interesting and entertaining challenges.
Children may eventually become bored with stationary, unchanging objects that they see every time they visit a playground. This is especially true for older children. Objects that can be rearranged to create novel items may be more interesting for them.
Benefits of Natural Playscapes
Interesting Additions
A natural playground may contain wooden objects such as a tree house, a bridge, seats, and tables. An outdoor musical instrument made of wood can be a lovely addition. While these objects aren't natural and merely mimic nature, they can be an enjoyable and valuable component of the play area.
Sometimes other manufactured objects that resemble natural ones are incorporated into a play area. One example of these objects is a hobbit-like cave that has real grass growing on its roof, as shown in the video below. Natural playgrounds may also contain an element from a traditional playground. For example, they may have slides built into hills, which give children the joy of sliding without the danger of falling off.
A Natural Play Area on School Grounds
Cooperation and Construction
It's important that there are constructive things for children to do in a natural playground. For example, children often like to dig in sand, create dams in water channels, stack stones or other objects, and build or make things. Their creations can give children great satisfaction.
Researchers have found that as children plan and carry out construction projects in natural play areas they are often working cooperatively with other children. The projects may require children to think creatively, innovate, and problem solve. As they collect and manipulate objects and fit them together the children are developing their spatial awareness abilities. They may also be practicing math.
Natural Playscapes
Stimulating Imagination and Creativity
A natural playground is a good place to play hide and seek or a game that children create themselves. A varied landscape accompanied by wooden items such as a tree house or a bridge can encourage children to use their imagination and play "Let's Pretend" games. Structures that they build themselves, like tents and other shelters, can also stimulate the imagination. Children are frequently observed using the objects and landscape in a natural playground to act out the stories that they create. Their cast of characters usually includes other children as well as themselves.
Playground Photos
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Improving Physical Fitness
Natural play areas with a variety of landscape features and objects can help children develop physical fitness and strength as well as balance and coordination skills. The children exercise as they run along trails or over grass, jump over or from objects, roll down hills, crawl through tunnels and under other structures, and climb over logs, tree stumps, boulders, and other items. Bigger playgrounds may offer more opportunities for exercise than smaller ones, however.
The space available for a playground is an important factor to consider when designing the area. Crowding too many landscaped structures into the area may not be a good idea, even when the structures resemble ones found in nature. Children need room to run.
There is one disadvantage to a natural playground that should be kept in mind, although it's not really a disadvantage at all. Children need to feel free to get messy and muddy in a natural play area and parents and teachers need to feel comfortable accepting this.
Providing an Opportunity for Nature Study
A natural playground may also be a good place for nature study, depending on the type and number of plants that it contains and the animals that it attracts. The presence of even a few plants will attract insects and other invertebrates.
A garden area in the playground is also a great way to introduce children to nature. Exploring nature in a playground could be especially helpful for inner city children, who may not have easy access to natural areas and may live in an apartment without a garden.
A New Natural Playground
Some Possible Problems: Time and Expense
A good natural playground needs to be planned carefully and may be time-consuming to set up. Considerable changes may need to be made to the available land. This process may be expensive. If the available area for creating a new playground is small or if the budget is limited, elements of a natural playground can be added to a pre-existing traditional one. Even the addition of a small piece of nature can add interest and usefulness to a conventional playground.

Maintenance and Safety
Some people imagine that the more rustic natural playgrounds need no maintenance and can simply be left to behave “naturally”, but this isn’t the case. Safety inspections need to be performed regularly. Points to consider include the following:
- Surfaces need to be maintained so that children have a soft landing spot if they fall.
- Tree houses, wooden furniture, and bridges need to be examined to ensure that the wood hasn’t rotted and that they are still intact and stable.
- Trees need to be inspected for weak branches or roots
- Tree stumps and logs need to be checked for decay.
- If children have used movable materials to create an object for themselves and others to enter or climb, the object needs to be inspected for safety before it's used.
- The areas where children dig and rearrange things need to be checked to ensure that they are in a suitable condition for the next visitors.
- The play area needs to be explored regularly to identify hazards such as poisonous plants or wasp nests that have appeared in the playground.
- If a fence surrounds a playground for security reasons, this needs to be checked regularly too, especially if it's covered by plants.

Dealing With Risk
Another possible concern in some natural play areas is that when certain objects are present, such as those that children climb, the risk of injury increases. I loved the challenge of climbing trees when I was a child. Although I can't remember ever being injured, the risk was there. It's certainly a factor that needs to be considered when designing a play area.
Some people involved in childhood education say that we are doing children no favors by protecting them from all risk in playgrounds. They say that it's important that children learn how to deal with risk (within reasonable limits). Climbing a tree, a large rock or collection of rocks, or a naturalistic sculpture can provide a fun and satisfying challenge for children and can stimulate their imagination. The potential dangers must be discussed by the playground designers, however, and by parents as well.
Benefits Versus Disadvantages
People who have observed the effects of play on children say that the advantages of natural play areas far outweigh the risks or inconveniences. In fact, many observers of children are very impressed with the benefits that the areas provide. I think that the creation of a natural playground is an idea that is definitely worth exploring.
References
- Tufts University Natural Playground Research Project
- University of Tennessee at Knoxville. (2012, October 11). Natural playgrounds more beneficial to children, inspire more play, study finds. ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 29, 2017 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121011135036.htm
- Factors that make a good play area for children from the University of Western Australia
- An interesting article about the benefits of risk in playgrounds from the Vancouver Sun
Questions & Answers
© 2012 Linda Crampton
Comments
The advantages of natural play grounds sounds great. The disadvantages too are described well. Very great hub!
thanks for this information.this is what school owners should have.even UNN nursery should learn from this
These natural playgrounds are made to order for kids to exercise their bodies and their imaginations. When I was a kid, many, many moons ago, tree-climbing was my favorite sport, Alicia. But keep that to yourself. :)
A super look at the pros and cons of natural playgrounds. The advantages have to outweigh the disadvantages!
What a great hub. Natural playgrounds help the children to be so much more creative. It reminds me of all the times we arrived home with scratches and torn dresses and panties from climbing trees, but breathless with all we had to tell about our adventures.
Very interesting ! This would be a good project for schools . Kids will be very excited to have a playground like this. I know parents will think twice too many things to consider.
Voted up and more. :-)
Hi Alicia, over here in England they have announced that children should be able to play and climb trees as some numpty decided that for health and safety reasons kids were not allowed to! thank goodness common sense won, most of the kids playgrounds do have the woodchip stuff, and so far it does seem to stop them hurting themselves, voted up and hub shared, nell
We were in the process of establishing a natural playground at the last center I worked. It was going to have some water canals, butterfly garden and outdoor tunnels. As you mentioned, we advised the parents beforehand of the possible "dirt" the kids would bring home. It didn't matter, they all loved the concept. It does require maintenance, but the play is so creative within this environment. Voted way up!
The look alone has me sold! You just can't get the same feel from all those brightly colored plastics. Plus do kids really need them? My favorite "play house" as a kid wasn't man made but inside a slightly hollowed out very large bush! It had such a magical feel to it that just can't be replicated. I'm going to have to check and see if there are any parks like this in my city! Fantastic hub Alicia! Voted a bunch and shared!
What a great concept. I love the earthen shelter with the grass over the top; we used to build those in science class when I was still teaching. Wonderful hub!
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