How to make a garden a great play space without finding yourself swimming in plastic.

“When we tell our children to play outside, the result can be alarming. The loud shrieks of joy you can just about live with – there are earplugs for coping with that kind of thing – but what of the mountain of plastic toys, trampoline and other gigantic play equipment dominating every corner of your former garden paradise?

“But don’t despair. It is possible to accommodate play without killing the garden aesthetic. One solution, provided you’re lucky enough to have a large outside space, is to contain the chaos by setting aside a dedicated children’s area where offending articles are kept; this can then be softened with the help of some screening. If you totally block out the space, it’s hard to supervise play, so it’s far better to introduce a semi-transparent divider made from materials and plants such as trellis, tall grasses or pleached trees.”

Read the full article here.