“Our new outdoor environment has provided our children with endless opportunities to explore, discover and create”
This project is a great example of how a playground renovation can transform the functionality of a centre. Nestled in Taupo, the community childcare centre has their heart in all the right places. Their existing outdoor space caters for all ages from infants to preschool.
Centre Manager Natalie described their existing playground as being “tired, boring and uninspiring for our children. It wasn’t user friendly and didn’t provide our children with opportunities to explore their surroundings even though it was such a big, natural space.”
It had a fantastic big sandpit, beautiful mature trees but all set on a large grass slope which was creating a safety hazard at which point Natalie decided to call our team.
Their brief was to retain as much of their stunning grass play spaces as possible but create a terraced landscape that provided functional flat areas with safe no slip pathways between the tiers.
Our design created terraces that retained the existing features including the trees, swings, sandpit and waterplay areas, with playful transitions between each ‘zone’. These areas incorporate log steppers and natural logs set amongst hardy planting that can withstand lots of little feet!
Removing an existing old fort opened up a large area to use for modular equipment that now can change and adjust to not only keep the kids interested in an ever changing playground but also allows the centre to adjust the size of equipment based on the current age group that fluctuates and varies over time.
Natalie has said that “our new outdoor environment has provided our children with endless opportunities to explore, discover and create. Playscape has worked with our existing natural outdoor environment and incorporated that in with the beautiful space they have created. Our playground has spaces for children to be with nature, to enjoy playing in groups, exploring little nooks and discovering their surroundings in a safe, meaningful way.”
“Working with Playscape has been a breeze! The staff have listened to our ideas and incorporated these into our playground. They have worked with our environment to enhance it while keeping the natural feel which is exactly what we wanted. The builders that came down were amazing and worked around our children still using the outdoor space; they were friendly and were happy to answer questions our children posed to them.
We are so happy with our space and with the work Playscape has done for us to create such a magical, open-ended environment.”