If children are to grow well, the outside play environment should be easily accessible and inviting – at home and at school.

This attractive and interesting garden has been designed to show how children can easily be encouraged to spend time outdoors engaging in constructive, safe and inspiring play.

On entering the garden through a willow arch, growing from reclaimed and painted car tyres, the bark path leads to the three sections of the garden: ‘child and self’, an area of calm sensory stimulation – sound, smell and touch; ‘child and society’ planted with a range of grasses (movement) around the decorative stepping stones made by reception and nursery children seeking to enhance play and develop friendships; and ‘the natural world’, featuring a safe wildlife pond.

The garden features some eye-catching structures including the central tripod linking the three sections of the garden, and the ‘crazy house’, made completely out of square.  All of the separate elements of the garden can be adapted easily for most situations but here are happily integrated through the use of colour.

The attractive and simple planting, including climbers, water plants, grasses, container plants, willow, and mosses, enhances the sensory experience of the whole garden for teachers, parents and, most of all, for children.