NSW SCHOOLS EMBRACE NATURAL PLAY

Annangrove PS Log Scramble

Andrew Smith Timber Creations have been installing natural playgrounds into schools for many years, often creating traditional playgrounds from natural materials. More recently, schools have been embracing more adventurous nature play installations; incorporating the natural features of their grounds and encouraging interaction with both living nature and recycled natural materials.

Annangrove Public School
Annangrove is a small school in a stunning environment overlooking the local bushland. They wanted a playground that suited the natural setting, and provided a unique play experience compared to traditional play equipment.

Timber Creations came up with a plan to utilise the exiting trees in the play area without damaging them, and created an amazing adventure playspace with balancing, climbing and exploring - vastly different to the standard playgrounds of the past.

Additionally – there is now almost enough room for the entire student body to have lunch on the balance play retaining wall, which triples as extra seating!

Elderslie Public School
Elderslie Primary School is a Public Private Partnership School, meaning they have to meet both sets of standards for any new playgrounds. The grounds are beautiful; however they desperately needed more play equipment to encourage active play. The school also had a few impractical spaces that were being wasted, such as the long, awkwardly sloping grass area in front of the kindergarten rooms. Timber Creations transformed this space into a meandering, discovery playspace that is now used by the whole school!

The designers from Timber Creations looked at the space and provided a custom package selection booklet that allowed the students to choose the play elements they most wanted. Timber Creations then created a design using the elements chosen, and configured and adapted them to best suit the existing space.

The resulting space includes an imaginative café shop area, an active balance play trail up the slope, a social storytelling area, a natural dry creek bed with a bridge and boat, and more! These elements sit among the grass, which has been carefully kept, so children can enjoy the different natural textures as they play.

Cawdor Public School
Cawdor PS had a very strong design brief for what they wanted in their playground. Their playground was designed to enhance the beautiful natural environment of the school grounds and encourage imaginative and physical play.

The main focus of the school community was their dream of a treehouse nestled among the existing trees above a mound. This presented a great number of challenges – creating something high in the canopy, on top of a mound covered with roots! Timber Creations visited the site and took precise measurements and photos to carefully figure out the height that could be achieved, where footings could be placed around the trees, and where climbing access could be, so that safe impact zones could be achieved. The result is fantastic!