What makes a good playground?

Designs for two new playgrounds in Dublin 15 have gone out for public consultation over the summer.

Plans for the spaces at Hartstown Park, and at Hazelbury Park, went before councillors at Fingal County Council’s Blanchardstown area committee on 5 June.

Both, the designs show, are leaning into an ongoing trend in playground design, one that moves away from the traditional metal slides and swings stuck in black tarmac, and towards play in nature, and more never-before-seen features. 

Hartstown Park builds in benches for older people, a sensory garden with wheelchair-friendly surfaces, and a quiet area for teenagers, said landscape architect Jane McCorkell, at the meeting.

A centrepiece is the giant troll – echoing a smaller one already under a bridge in the park, she said.

The idea is that no matter someone’s age, they feel excited in the park and use their imagination, she said. “You feel part of nature, and that you're doing more than just playing with the designated pieces of equipment.”

Meanwhile designs for Hazelbury Park, drawn up by landscape architect Tom Bradford, show four quarters: a woodland zone, a meadow, wetlands, and a hill area. 

“This looks really brilliant,” said Labour Councillor Mary McCamley. “Kids love roughing it.”

Sinn Féin Councillor Angela Donnelly raised a concern. “One of the big issues that comes back all the time, parents asking for the nettles to be cut away.”

“Point taken,” said Michael Staunton, executive parks and landscape officer at Fingal County Council. 

But he wasn’t sure yet how they’d handle it yet, Staunton said. “As Councillor McCamley said, there’s a balance. We need to rough it up a little bit. But we’ll definitely take that on board.”

What kids want

At 8:30pm this past Monday, three women were chatting in a circle on the grass at Mountjoy Square Park, watching their sons run around the playground and race across grass. A baby girl sat in one’s lap.

Nine-year-old Michael Retean listed off favourite games.

“We like playing tag, football, hide-and-go-seek, tag,” said Michael. “Monkey in the middle. Duck duck goose – .” 

– we don’t even play that that much,” interjected his brother Kevin, younger than him by a year.

Michael continued: “Ball-tag, tag, volleyball.”

An ideal playground? 

The boys gestured to a dome-shaped feature in the playground, with a rock climbing wall and high platform. 

“Maybe, like, one of them rockets. Because you can swing like a monkey,” said Michael.

Climbing takes the top spot for seven-year-old Kyrylo, who was playing on the monkey bars with his dad. 

It means you can climb trees and not fall, he said. “And, like, get down.”

Michael, Kevin, and their friends, pitched other ideas for an ideal playspace: a trampoline, a library, a treehouse, a stage for performing, a football pitch. 

Then the classics. “A big slide,” said Michael. “But, like, not so high. Because some kids can fall. About two swings will be cool, a kids’ swing, and a bigger swing.” 

“A spinning thing,” Kevin says.

And, the brothers agreed, spaces for dogs – one for aggressive ones, one for calm ones –  and rubbish bins. 

“It’s good for the environment. And the world,” said Michael. Kevin chimed in then, also definitely trees and flowers, they all agreed.

Sophie Von Maltzan, a UCD professor and landscape architect, said she was running workshops recently and asked kids what their favourite outdoor activity was.

“You know what they said? Litter collecting,” said Von Maltzan.

For her, that illustrated a couple of challenges, she said. One is how society’s and parental anxieties reflect on children, she says. 

But also, how important it is to find ways to prompt kids to reimagine what they want, rather than repeat simply what they just know and what they think adults want them to say, she says. 

Her workshops can last a week, she says. And it means she finds patterns.

As she sees it, playgrounds should respond to where they are and give a sense of pride in a place, she says. “And they should allow, they should be embedded in the environment and in nature, so that you become immersed.”

A changing approach

McCorkell, the landscape architect who worked on the playground at Hartstown Park, said she felt one of the most important elements of it was the water. 

“The water is obviously less than two inches, but the children could race their boats down it, or have a game, or make believe, and all of those things,” she said. 

“So that was really the concept that we came with, that this is about enchantment,” she said. 

At the new playground in Hazelbury Park, kids will have “sand play, climbing structures, slide swings, spinning and other features”, said Bradford, the landscape architect who worked on that one.

“And all of these sort of nestled within the woodland, should hopefully give a feeling of playing in the woods,” he said.

He said further out from the core, there’s spaces for teenagers. “To relax and socialise, and also sort of spaces for them to be on their own as well, with hammocks and different seating areas,” he said.

Ciaran Farren, a landscape architect with Hawthorn Heights, who’s worked on playgrounds for over a decade, said he’s seen a “massive change” in how it’s done.

That includes shifts in materials, designs, colours, biodiversity, and the lessons they’re intending to encourage, he says. 

Lots of different people who design playgrounds are headed in the same direction, Farren says. 

"We're competitors, but we're all pushing towards that approach in play now,” said Farren.

“Where we can use a natural material, we'll try to use it," he says. Such as timber, boulders, sculptural elements, sound play, he says.

There are more landscape architects like him in the field, who favour greater biodiversity and plants, he says. It’s what many councils want too now, he says.

Farren says he likes the softer palette he used for his new playground in Dún Laoghaire – which has ships to match the harbour, and plays on shades of green and blue, golden yellows. 

“It blends in more with the environment. It's less harsh,” he said. "There used to be a lot of just hard tarmac, bright yellows, bright blues, reds, purples.”

There is tension between creativity, maintenance, and risk, he says. But “we’ve met in the middle now – spaces that are robust but also natural”, said Farren.

“We find ways that we can create these spaces that are easily maintained, but still have that natural environment and the grasses,” he said. “But are still robust enough to take the abuse of, you know, children using it every day.”

Deborah Clarke, a Dublin City Council official, and its former play officer, said the turn towards natural elements in playgrounds is partly a response to greater development and built-up concrete landscapes. 

In years past, kids could find a natural landscape easily, she says. “There were always places to go, where you could be in nature, and they were wild and kind of, you know, unchartered territory, if you like.”

“I suppose more and more of those places have gone and been built over,” she says. 

The risk question

Farren, the landscape architect with Hawthorn Heights, says that most times he designs a playground, it’s for a council. 

His designs must be durable and consider liability and risk, Farren says. 

There can be some risk but not too much, said Farren. A swing is medium risk, he says, as it could collide with someone walking past.

Some councils want to avoid almost any risk, he says.

“And it's, it's understandable, especially in this day and age,” he said. “As a designer, to work in this industry, we kind of get to know what, what councils accept and what they want.”

Still, he said, having some risk is important in a playground. For fun. 

Clarke, the former council play officer, said children need space to allow them to assess risks and practice problem-solving.

“How can they address problems and try and solve them when they're not in spaces that allow them the options to even explore that, you know, and also to disappoint? It's about resilience, all those things,” she said.

Helen Lynch, a play researcher at University College Cork, said there has been a shift away from considering risk as a problem, to a cost-benefit analysis of it. She said that a lot is learned from taking risks, whether or not the result is positive.

"Play is often about testing the edges of their skill-set, and trying something new,” she said. "Incrementally building integration of skills is what play is about … As soon as one skill is got, they add another to it."

Children need to practice risk through play to develop their own intuition, she says.

For Lynch, "Playgrounds should provide opportunities for manipulating things – water play, sand play, loose parts that they could imagine and construct with."

That’s a great benefit of natural elements too, says UCD professor and landscape architect Sophie Von Maltzan. "A natural environment allows for multiple interpretations of play.”

"Play using playgrounds is all about narratives, imaginary play. In your head, you imagine what you're playing, and that could be anything,” said Von Maltzan. 

She showed a slide with a young girl on one of her designs – a horizontal tree trunk, with certain animal-like features 

A tree trunk can be many things, she says. “It can be a balance beam. It can be a seat. It can be a bridge in your imaginary game.”

Von Maltzan often uses the trunks of native trees, in part, because she likes that they’re going to decay, she says.

They’re going to crumble as the years pass, she says. “And there's ants living in them, and lots of insects. You know, this thing is actually an insect hotel.”

“You know the idea of permanence that people always want – that just doesn't happen,” she said. Kids understand this, especially when it’s explained to them, she says.

"You cannot have a park that is static. It will change, it will grow, she said. “And you will have the nettles unless someone takes them away." 

Nettles might not be a kid’s favourite thing, but she thinks that shifts when they understand them more, she says. 

She said if an entomologist told them about it, for example, they might feel differently.  “It’s being invited in, being part of it.”

They might start to see it with more layers, she says. “A year later, the kids are still looking for insects, you know, and loving it because they're informed and they're involved.”

The idea is, playgrounds are about engaging kids' imaginations together, crafting stories in tandem with each other. 

"These playgrounds are a platform. What they're longing for is a platform for meeting."

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.