Of Playgrounds Past and Present

Recently I was reminiscing about one of my school playgrounds. It had some fairly old equipment (even for 1968), a merry-go-round that I absolutely loved, and included a fairly large space with nothing but trees. This was where we pretended we were horses and galloped around. I loved recess. 

This got me to thinking about all the time I spent at playgrounds with my kids. They were mostly at parks, like Adair Park and Murphy-Candler Park and Hammond Park. We made good use of McDonalds playgrounds – yes, we were by no means above the all-plastic kind. We went to school playgrounds and YMCA playgrounds. My kids also played at the Wills Park playground when it was just a sandy area with an old metal swing in the middle of it. You can still see the sand today if you know where to look.

About the only kind of playground that neither my kids nor I liked were the too sunny ones; playgrounds that just seemed like obligatory pieces of metal and plastic stuck out in the middle of asphalt heat islands. Sadly, I just described a lot of school playgrounds, but, something is better than nothing. As long as they are giving the kids some place to play. 

Playgrounds can also be expensive places that have been studied, designed and built by top professionals in the field. I’ve had the good fortune of having visited two of the finest and perhaps most expensive playgrounds in the country. One is the Doris I. Schnuck Children’s Garden at the Missouri Botanical Garden, which takes up almost two acres and includes a cave, wetlands, a steamboat, a tree house and a replica of a Midwestern prairie village, among other things. 

The other famous playground I’ve visited is the Hershey Children’s Garden at the Cleveland Botanical Garden. This place has a wheelchair accessible treehouse, a small meadow and pond, a cave, worm bins. Of the two places I’ve just described, the Hershey Garden is my favorite for sheer ingenuity at packing so much natural play area into a small space. It doesn’t come close to the footprint of the Schnuck Garden, and yet it seems to deliver more.

Notice that although I just described these places as playgrounds, they are technically “Children’s Gardens” and I assure you that all things botanical are featured throughout these places from sensory herb gardens to potting benches where kids can pot up their own plants. It is a testimony to the power of plants and gardens that they are a central feature of these playgrounds.  Or let’s say that in reverse.  It is a testimony to the power of playgrounds that they are a central feature of these gardens. 

A local children’s playground that most closely approximates my ideal playground would have to be the Webb Zone over at Webb Bridge Park. If you read my blogs at all you know that I am always ready to gush about Webb Bridge Park. There is some aspect of genius about its design and it is certainly apparent in the playground there. It is situated among trees, so it’s not too hot. It has the obligatory play equipment, but better than that, it features a huge sand pit that is next to, get this, a tiny, kid-size, flowing stream! This “stream” isn’t always running. Park personnel control the on/off switch. But if you happen to be there on a day when the water is flowing, what a charm! There is a beautiful vine covered arbor for kids to play under and a little circle of trees that kids can enter and where they can play. For the parents there are plenty of park benches in the shade. I love this playground so much that I want to play there. Interestingly, on both occasions that I visited the Webb Zone this past week, I only saw children playing in the sand, along the stream and running in and out of the arbor. I never saw any kids playing on the play equipment! What does that say?

Playgrounds are awesome. Play is restorative and essential to kids of all ages, but today I’m just thinking about the kids.