How to Design a Child-Friendly Garden With Decking

A child-friendly garden is a space that is assiduously dedicated to promote imagination and play for the kids while providing a spatial area for older members of the family to unwind, enjoy and relax. This type of garden is a retreat for children, and it can be made possible with a good deal of planning, picking the ideal plants and positioning.

Whether you are restricted by space or budget, our child-friendly garden tips will enable you to create an outdoor area that is suitable for merriment, fun, entertainment and learning. We will suggest to you ideas that you can implement easily that can make your garden, even more, child friendly.

Invest in play equipment

As you plan to design your outdoor space or garden, ensure you infuse your kid’s idea into your planning. Investing in a piece of play equipment is a way you can do this. A sandpit or a steel slide can help your kids have fun and engage in physical activities. Play equipment can also help your kids develop their mental acumen while promoting learning. They also help to encourage collaboration, creativity and critical thinking.

Some examples of play equipment that can enable your kid to have fun and be entertained in the garden include:

• Sandbox
• Backyard climbing walls.
• Tire seesaw
• Woodblocks
• Trampoline
• Backyard Water Slide etc.

Space for entertainment

A child-friendly garden ought to have a deck for relaxing, socialising, eating meals or watching the kids play – it can be a small space built with composite decking materials. Unless the deck project is big, to save money, we would advise you to learn how to lay decking yourself. After the project is completed, you would want to get a table with many chairs and a shade or canopy for the hot summer. A shade will protect you from the harsh ultraviolet rays of the sun. You can buy BBQ equipment, with which you can use to celebrate the summer with family and loved ones. Depending on the space available, you can add a firepit, a beauty during a family gathering and a warmth provider in chill weather.

Treehouse and playhouse

Children love treehouses. You don’t even need to have a tree these days before building a treehouse for your kid. A treehouse can provide unlimited entertainment and merriments that will stick to your child’s memory for a long time. Alternatively, you can get a playhouse (made of wood or plastic). To add an idyllic flavour, you can plant some shrubs, climbing plants and trees surrounding it.

Although treehouses are extraordinary to play accessories for children, they can boost their motor skill through climbing and play. They also enable children to spend more time with nature, building their psychological health.

Always remember to prioritise safety to reduce the risk of injury when building your treehouse.

Grow a sensory garden

Children enjoy engaging with nature. They have fun touching and smelling flowers and plants. This is why we suggest you grow a sensory garden that will appeal to their visual, tactile and olfactory senses. This type of garden will not only provide fun for your child but will present an ample learning opportunity. Your child will be able to learn about plant cultivation and the biological clock of plants.

For example, colourful plants such as sunflowers, nasturtium and marigold can stimulate their sense of sight. The wind passing through these grasses will make rustling sounds that can provide euphonic pleasure, especially in a quiet atmosphere. Flowers such as chocolate cosmos, rosemary, honeysuckle and lemon balm give a very olfactory pleasing fragrance that children will love. For flowers that can provide savoury experience for your kid, examples are chives, watercress, wild strawberry and rosemary flower.

Garden decoration and ornaments

Garden decoration and ornaments provide a personality to your garden. They can be used to create a sense of imagination, which can trigger the interest of your child. A garden decoration doesn’t have to be expensive, you can get them in craft stores, or you can do it yourself.

Here are some ideas of budget-friendly garden ornaments you use to add glamour to your garden:

Painted Rocks – Painted rocks can be used to add some colourful spots around your garden. Your kids can bring together rocks and paint them in bright colours. These colourful rocks can complement the beauty of the flowers and plants while increasing the visual appeal of the garden.

Coloured Flower Pots- You can transform your dull-looking flower pots into beautiful plant containers by allowing your kids to paint and draw on them with bright colours and pens.

Paving stones – Coloured rocks, shells and pods can be placed at a strategic and visible location in the garden to beautify it.