Getting Creative With Your Family Garden

When you’re designing a garden, it would be really easy to look at the latest trends, look at what excites us as a designer, and go all guns blazing (or should we say spades!) creating your masterpiece. But that probably wouldn’t be the best way to go about it from a client’s point of view. At the very least we need to listen to what your needs are. For some people, that’s an extension to their immaculate home – they want something that makes a statement that they can showcase with pride – you want something to show for all those hours you do at work don’t you!

For many people though, the garden has a very practical place in the home. And there’s nowhere you see this more than with family gardens. Senior Designer, Jeff gets particularly excited about family gardens, as he loves that you need to be a bit more considerate as well as creative when looking at the logistics and practicalities of a well-used family garden. The best way to describe Jeff’s ethos is…

A Great Design Benefits All The Family In One Place

However, you won’t want an area to relax in, right next to put a trampoline for instance. A garden often has to satisfy the needs of a few members of the family from toddlers and children, through to grandparents, so let’s take a look at a couple of things it helps to bear in mind…

Allow Some Energy To Be Released In The Garden

To us adults, they may look like a swing, a slide, or a path. To a child, they are an invitation to enjoy yourself! To play! We’ll all have felt the effect this last few months of being cooped up – to0 many children, that’s what they feel like lots of the time. They are little fireballs of energy that absolutely has to be burnt off, so we can make our lives a lot easier by giving them that opportunity right where we can see them.

There are some gorgeous garden toys available for children now that can be incorporated as part of the landscaping. A relatively small garden can be landscaped with the full family in mind. A patio area created by the house is practical for food service, and the bottom of the garden could have a further patio and play area where the children could play happily. You can sit at the table and chairs with the children while they play in their little playhouse or on the slide and trampoline, or you can have a more peaceful experience sitting by the house a little more out of earshot of the excitable play!

You could add pathways across the garden for bikes in mind, so not only does it have the aesthetic role of making the garden seem longer than it is, it also allows the children to ride up and down, with a little turning point created especially at the far end to allow them the ease of play.

Create A Level Playing Field

It seems obvious, but if you want your children to be able to play safely in the garden, you want it to be as hazard-free as possible. Steps and layers are an invitation for trouble when you have a superhero running around the garden! The fewer hazards in the garden, the more you can relax and allow the children to play unsupervised which is important in a world where children don’t get that opportunity like in the olden days! (Age-dependent of course!)

Thinking about the levels also means factoring in potential issues such as drainage – we won’t even go there on how much fun the kids would have with a puddle problem! Thinking ahead when you create the garden saves so much time and effort in the long run!

Need a more useable garden space to enjoy with all the family? Call our design team today on 0116 210 0760 to discuss your options with us.