Creating a Summer Adventure Garden that's safe and sustainable 

It’s best to tune into your child when taking on a project

Regular family entertainers? This versatile Cirque-2-Climb frame accommodates different ages and multiple children. Includes a sand-pit and mini-market for the pre-schoolers. Build your own and choose your colour slide and features from €899, junglegym.ie

SPRINTING out into the sunshine, rocketing into that clear blue sky, or just sprawling peacefully across butter soft grass, children experience a rich world of imaginative play, incidental learning and vital physical release in the garden.

You deserve relaxation too, so safety comes first. Let’s look at what’s involved in creating a fascinating outdoor wonderland with the space you have available.

Safety first and last

It’s vital to secure the garden and to limit access to obvious hazards across the existing garden, especially for vulnerable pre-schoolers.

This would include hard landscaping with steps, water features, areas for falls from any height, access to the garage/shed/driveway/road/other people’s gardens, and toxic or sharp-edged plants.

Every day, you need to be your own health and safety officer.

Many children are energised by the forbidden and will charge off at the dare of a parent or guardian’s “no”.

Don’t assume you’ll be there when they reach a lit BBQ or jagged bit of fencing.

Extensive hard areas of paving? This really does force you into constant hand-holding for even slightly older toddlers.

Imaginative play doesnít need much prompting. Start simple with this Aksent Sandpit in FSC timber and metal corners, with integrated kitchens, benches and working taps, from €149, exittoys.ie

Young children lack balance and dexterity, and this doesn’t improve with high excitement!

Soft going is far less hazardous.

Multiple play areas (sand pits, lawn room, play equipment) with safe paths in rich lawn or wood-chips offer a happy, protective waddle from one activity to another.

Deeper grass, sand, rubber matting and bark mulch can all be used as surfacing to reduce the physical impact of a tumble.

Check the depth and yield of your essential footing every summer. Loose bark should be 50cm deep (uncompressed).

Just top it where it has degraded. Raise the blades on the mower to leave the sward longer and softer. This will cloak the ground below, preventing it from baking hard. Pick out stones, debris, and pet faeces as they appear. Interlocking play mats in recycled rubber or foam, can be laid to give shock absorbance over concrete or tarmac. Pack of nine from just €3. B&Q.

• Tip: If you have any sort of pool, pond, water feature, even an area of marshland or barrel or large bucket containing water, it should be completely emptied, fenced off, or filled in with sand while your children are under six-years-old.

Look over other people’s gardens with the same emphasis on safety as you would at home.

Now, with the topography of your garden in mind, what is possible in terms of a kid’s roam?

Planting and landscaping will naturally suggest positions for new features and play elements.

Zoning even a little sitting place can provide a little alone time. Treasure areas of dappled shade to protect their delicate skin on a hot day.

Your best bet for a play survey is tuning into your youngster. Together, look for intriguing areas to cavort, rest, and hide.

They might identify natural hiding spots and sun-warmed areas behind some soft hedging or by the base of a tree.

Ask them where the fairies live.

Bold, invigorating play and improvised story-telling, over wide reaches of a safe garden, can go on for weeks.

These adventures will effortlessly improve gross motor skills and boost their coordination. Your kids will always surprise you with the creativity of their unique mind-palace.

Do not be surprised by demands for an area to simply sweep with a twig broom or a stable area for imaginary ponies.

Considering we might be installing dynamic play equipment, think about how children move. We need safe perimeters for their exaggerated soaring, springing, and tumbling landings. The additional safe zone for a swing is in excess of 2m to avoid collisions.

Shrubs and tree limbs that could snag a child as they cleave the air should be clipped back or taken out.

Younger children can become overwhelmed and rough play is inevitable.

Ensure there’s a good eyeline from the house. On your survey, do not forget your neighbours. Does anyone relish a June evening with a hysterical couple of kids appearing over the fence from the trampoline?

• Tip: Could you leave your children just a little bit of your border? Sifting clay in a flower bed is oddly satisfying ASMR for children. Gently encouraged, this could be a first attempt at gardening.

Accommodate their requests with age-appropriate activities to boost their mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing.

I love the well priced Aksent Sandpit in FSC timber and metal corners, with integrated kitchens, benches and working taps, from €149. exittoys.ie

Equipped for fun

When spending serious money, the very first thing to find is age-appropriate play equipment they can safely navigate — climbing, perching, swinging, and sliding down.

Anything you buy, new or old, should be made and tested to the CE European safety regulations EN 71 and secured to the ground.

Age aside, don’t ignore height suggestions for the piece either. It’s a real risk to let wobblers better off in the sand pit or soft plastic galleon to “grow into” a jungle gym intended for older kids.

Modular pieces that offer different levels of age activity, or that grow with the child, are a much better investment.

Look out for height adjustable wendy-houses that can move from the ground to stilts, and robust, full-size swings with adjustable height settings.

Quality counts. All play equipment should have covers for bolts, hand grips, and bumper pads where needed. Replace these as needed. Tyre swings, high, suspended obstacle courses, and ziplines are a perennial joy (ziplines do demand quite a rangy garden).

Ensure there is a nice, deep fall-zone around anything high — including diminutive climbing walls, monkey bars, cargo nets, and bridge.

Prices for multi-feature gyms in treated timber range from €700 – €2,500.

Standard garden sheds are not designed as wendy houses, but a stable shed could be adapted for slightly older children as a beloved den.

• Tips: Water slides are trending, and offer an inexpensive bit of fun for everyone over three-years-old outside the hose-ban periods. H20 Go slides from €49.99 for an 8.5m slide with drench pool. Irishsportswarehouse.ie.

Some suppliers allow you to design your own unit online, try junglegym.ie

Sustainability/longevity

It’s natural to want new things for your children. With erecting the piece yourself, you have the peace of mind that the equipment meets current safety standards.

To get the most for your money and to wring seasons out of it, look for products that not only grow, but that offer more than one activity.

A “live” willow dome, or a large cotton teepee adults can also enjoy, will be transformed daily by a child’s fertile imaginings.

There’s a lot of beguiling, plastic play equipment out there in “recycled materials”, but they will largely end up in the civic landfill.

Where they do shine is in their bright colour, splinter-free surfacing and soft moulded corners. Anchor these lighter pieces and ensure you don’t exceed the weight rating for safe use. Where they remain in safe, good condition, do what you can to return them to the circular economy — gifting them to friends.

Wooden multi-gyms allow you to vandalise that play tower into a pergola, chicken coop or cold frame in the future.

Instagram and Pinterest are full of ideas to recycle wendy houses and even rigid paddling pools.

With second-hand wood or even resin fortresses and jungle gyms, check every screw, nut, bolt, plank, and panel, and re-assess the structural stability of the whole piece twice every summer.

Fail to spot one un-sunk screw in an older unit, and it could reef a little leg.

Sand off any splintered areas of wood and check for signs of rot. Do not use balded out steel-belted radials for swings — the poking wires are lethal.

• Tip: Ensure any DIY play piece, including tree houses, match everything a commercially made play piece does in terms of age-range and safety specifications. Tooled up to build your own tree-house?

How to Build a Treehouse by Christopher Richter & Miriam Ruggeberg, is written by a professional tree-house builder. €21. Thelibraryproject.ie