5 Tips to bring more nature into your outdoor environment
                     5 Tips to bring more nature into 
your outdoor environment
https://www.giggletree.com.au/
One of the biggest hurdles that a lot of childcare centres 
have struggled with under the new National Quality 
Standards, is to do with making sure their outdoor 
environment has natural elements. Some centres only have 
rubber or synthetic surfaces throughout their playgrounds, 
and it is hard to put permanent elements like real grass or 
gardens in, because the plants root system can't break 
through the rubber.  Getting these surfaces ripped up and 
re-done can be a very costly experience for owners, so if you 
are looking for some ideas on how to bring nature to your 
outdoor environment, on a low budget here are 5 tips that 
might help you get started.
Tip 1 -Tyre Garden/Veggie beds
Using tyres as garden beds are a quick, easy and cheap 
way of setting up garden beds, these can be directly laid 
onto rubber or synthetic grass.  All you need is the 
following items and you can see if most of these items 
can be donated to the service.
 Tyres (either car or tractor tyres if you can get them)
 Black plastic (place this under the tyre)
 Soil
 Mulch
 Plants/Seedlings
Tip 2 - Digging Patches
Children love digging in the dirt, they also love 
creating things in the dirt patch like car tracks.  
When looking at adding digging patches on rubber 
or synthetic grass surfaces then you need to look 
at what you could use to put the dirt in, you could 
use large tyres, large plastic containers or you 
could use large rocks to create an area to put the 
dirt on.  I would suggest if you are placing the dirt 
directly on the rubber or synthetic surface place 
plastic down first before you lay the dirt down.
Picture is from 
http://www.letthechildrenplay.net/
Tip 3 - Loose parts
Loose parts are a great way of bring more 
natural items into the playgrounds.  (For 
further information on loose parts see my 
earlier blog on loose parts).  You can add 
items to the outdoor environment like 
bricks, rocks, tree stumps, piping etc.
Tip 4 - Hay Bales
I have recently seen centres that buy hay 
bales and use them for all different ideas, 
they can be used as seating outside, as 
cubby house walls, as obstacles to climb 
over etc.  Once they start breaking down 
then you can add hay to your garden beds 
as mulch.
Picture is 
from http://www.letthechildrenplay.net/
Tip 5 – Vertical Gardens & hanging baskets
You can make vertical gardens from timber pallets or 
from old timber blinds. Other ideas are to get hanging 
baskets to either hang of your fence or hang down 
from you veranda roofs.  I recently went out and 
purchase a vertical wall garden from Bunnings all up 
with soil and plants it costs just under $70 dollars.
You could also check my facebook and pinterest page. A great resource to get more ideas from is Let the 
Children Play their wedbsite is 
http://www.letthechildrenplay.net/. 
Contact 
us
Email - [email protected]
Call us - 07 3204 1102
http://giggletree.com.au/