The Backyard Playground : Recreational Landscapes and Play Structures

By combining building projects for children's play structures with tips and ideas for creative landscaping, this book goes much further than any other to helping readers create a fun, safe, and interactive outdoor play area for their children in an environment that is useful and appealing to adults.

The projects in this book include a broad range of designs, for toddlers to teenagers. The play structure project is the classic, timber-style set found in many yards and can accommodate several accessories and future modifications. Playing in either of the two tree house projects, kids will find adventure, privacy, and a connection to the outdoors. The climbing wall project provides kids-and parents-with a fun way to develop strength and concentration. There are also projects for playhouses and forts that kids can help build and several plans for child-size outdoor furniture.

Where appropriate, projects are designed for adaptation to a different use after the child outgrows them. For example, the sandpit project is a decorative sandbox that can easily be adapted into a garden bed; the playhouse could become a garden shed in later years. In addition to the projects, there are dozens of tips for using trees and other plantings to create private, natural places for kids that are integrated with the general landscape.

This book focuses on the nationwide trend of parents encouraging outdoor play for their kids while, at the same time, keeping them close to home.

The editors of Creative Publishing international have created more than 25 of the best-selling books on home repair, home improvement, and landscaping. All books are exhaustively researched, written, photographed, and edited by veteran staff members with years of experience in their areas of expertise.