Parents return to nature for creative, fun back yards

Some of my fondest memories from childhood involve playing in the ravine next to my grandmother's home with my cousins.

There wasn't a swing set or jungle gym in sight. We ran over the bridges that spanned her almost-dry creek, made forts in the trees and bushes and climbed over the big rocks trying to attack the other guys' fort.

It was a world of imagination and we all loved it. In fact, my cousins and I fondly reminisce about that ravine whenever we get together as adults.

Little did I know at the time that many years later landscapers and child experts would consider this to be the ultimate back yard to foster children's imaginative play.

"For the last three years or so we have been getting more and more requests from customers to design yards that encourage imaginative play without using big monster play equipment," said Carrie Woleben-Meade, design manager for Mariani Landscape in Lake Bluff.

"Parents seem to want to encourage exploration of the environment without stifling their children's creativity, so we have been incorporating into our landscape plans things like labyrinths and mazes, walls to run on and to build forts next to and tree house-like platforms in trees with rope ladders to access them," she said.

Tall plants that children can run through, walkways over dry creek beds and big steppingstones have also become popular in backyard environments, as have organic gardens where children can plant their own vegetables.

"We need to get our children outside more where they can climb, exercise and interact with nature," Woleben-Meade explained.

In an age when children's free time has become incredibly structured with organized sports, after-school care and parents who fear to let them roam free, experts say adventure play gardens seem to be the best way today's families can reclaim for their children some of the freedom to imagine and explore that all of us enjoyed when we grew up.

In such play spaces there are opportunities for children to roll down hills, ride bicycles over bumps, follow interesting paths, climb, play with water and sand and create imaginary worlds.

In a child's imagination, bridges like the ones in my grandmother's ravine can become a pirate ship sailing the sea or a covered wagon crossing the prairie. Tall hedges can be used for a great game of hide-and-seek. Simple tree platforms can become the home of the Swiss Family Robinson or a monkey habitat.

Parents have jumped on the bandwagon because they want to encourage creative play in their children, but also because of aesthetics. According to Woleben-Meade, many of them do not have the space for, or like the look of, the big playground structures.

"So we are constantly thinking about ways to incorporate natural play areas into the backyard plans of our customers who have children," she said.

Play areas like this are even more common in Europe than they are in the United States, according to Heidi Natura, owner and landscape architect with Living Habitats of Chicago. She helped design the Animal Houses play exhibits at the Morton Arboretum in Lisle.

"It is considered 'deconstructionist' landscaping among those in the business and it involves creating places where children can create forts and hide-outs for unstructured play. The idea is for children to be able to touch and interface with nature in a way that is not so sanitized and spoon-fed," Natura said.

"The idea is to work with less to create more," she said. "Give children a pile of sand or a mound of dirt, small boulders, logs, barrels, etc. There is really nothing to buy. It is more something to be allowed for than something to be created.

"Children just need space to run and play. They need a simple swing hanging from a tree branch; gardens they can plant and care for; and a sandbox. Kids always gravitate to a sandbox," Natura said.

Natural play areas encourage not only imaginative play, but also cooperation, according to Katherine Johnson, children's garden manager at the Morton Arboretum. "Children have to agree about what make-believe they are going to play in a natural setting because that tree or bush or bridge can be many different things. So, in order to play, they must cooperate and agree on what they are seeing."

In this way play also encourages team-building because it is not competitive like organized sports.

Johnson likes to see trees and shrubs that children can climb under and use as a refuge like a weeping willow or a huge juniper that allows playhouses and forts to be made underneath.

"I enjoyed seeing my own children gathering twigs and pieces of shrubs to build an imaginary campfire and then gathering flower petals to make a 'soup,' " she recalled.

Johnson also advocates including in private yards things like steppingstone paths that challenge children to hop from stone to stone; small crab apple trees that children can safely climb to get exercise and learn their limitations; and even unique refuge places, like arbors and trellises overgrown with vines, or sunflower houses made by planting sunflowers that grow tall in a square or rectangle. She said they can be intermixed with morning glory vines, which grow up between the sunflowers and make a small refuge in the middle where children love to play.

Many public places worldwide have also taken up this fun challenge to let people experience nature while playing. In addition to the Animal Houses area at the Morton Arboretum, there are two fabulous mazes there where the aim is to find as many dead ends as you can - not the end, Johnson said. One is for adults and older children and the other is low enough for toddlers to enjoy while their parents keep watch. Corn mazes are also popular at many area pumpkin farms each autumn.

In England they have taken it a step further at the Trentham Estate in North Staffordshire. Their "Barfuss Park" is a barefoot trail where members of the public, young and old, walk a 1,000-meter route over timber, bark, mulch, pebbles, wood, water and mud for fun.

Proponents claim that walking barefoot over many surfaces "expands one's sense of touch, helping us regain a connection with nature through our contact with the ground beneath our feet," according to the Trentham Estate Web site, trenthamleisure.co.uk/barefoot_walk.html.

They also believe that it promotes good health by improving the cardiovascular system.