Garden Play Areas: What to Decide Before You Build

Key Takeaways

• The ideal garden play area belongs where it can be seen from the kitchen window, with every route from it to the road, the pond or the gate secured before committing.
• The space a swing or climbing frame needs is the frame plus the ground a child can fall onto, which BS EN 1176 sets at a minimum of 1.5m all round and 1.75m in front of and behind a swing.
• Whether to dig a play area down or build it up is a drainage question, because a pit dug into ground that holds water becomes a pond and a raised bed needs an edge to hold it.
• A heavy duty membrane goes under every loose play surface, to stop bark working down into the soil and soil working up into the bark, not to stop weeds.
• Certified play bark and play chip are rated for falls above 3m at 100mm, 200mm and 300mm deep, so extra depth buys time before topping up rather than a tested, higher safety rating.
• Play bark does not thin evenly across a play area, it gets dragged out from under the swing and the slide exit first, so the depth that matters is the thinnest spot.
• Play sand is never laid deeper than 300mm, because sand deep enough to tunnel into can collapse.

About five years ago, I was called to look at a play area in a south eastern family garden. The climbing frame had been put up the previous summer at the far end, where the lawn was flattest and it seemed least likely to get in the way. By the time I got there, the surface below the swing was below the fall height safety depth, there was play bark scattered around the play area and tracked through the garden and the parents had realised that having the equipment at the bottom of the garden meant a fair bit of walking back and forth. It was going to need to be moved, but they had a rockery where the play set should have gone, and it cost them a lot.

It was the decisions that hadn’t been considered before installation: where the play area would be most useful, how it would fit with the rest of the garden, what would happen to the ground underneath it, and how the family would actually use the space. I’ve come across variations of this job many times since, which is why parents should consider six decisions that need making before buying a play set. This guide takes them in the order I would tackle them.

Images courtesy of StudioRoost

Where should a garden play area go?

A garden play area goes where an adult can see it from the kitchen or living room, and only after every way out of the garden has been checked and secured.

I call the second part the escape audit and I did it on every family garden whenever I quoted. Stand where the play area will be and walk every route away from it: the side passage, the gap behind the shed, the fence panel that leans. A side path with no gate is a route to the road that nobody is watching. I make sure that is closed off as part of the job, not as an afterthought once the play area is built.

Then think about the sun. A swing seat in full sun through July is too hot to sit on by mid afternoon, and a slide in full sun is worse. Some shade for part of the day is a good thing here, which is the opposite of what you want for a patio. A play area on the north side of a big shrub or under the edge of a tree canopy tends to get used more, not less.

Last, distance from the house. A play area at the far end of a 30m garden gets used on dry days. One 10m from the back door gets used when it is drizzling too.

How big does a garden play area need to be?

A garden play area needs to be the size of the equipment plus the ground a child can land on, which is usually the bigger part.

BS EN 1176, the standard play equipment is made to, calls that landing ground the impact area and sets it at a minimum of 1.5m out from the equipment, rising to 1.75m in front of and behind a swing and beyond the bottom of a slide. A compliant frame you bought will have its own figure in the instructions, and that number wins.

The worked example that catches people is a single swing. The frame might be 2m wide. Add 1.75m front and back and you are surfacing something like 2m by 5.5m, most of which has no equipment standing on it. That is the area you are ordering bark for, and it is easy to work out using Outdoor Aggregate’s play bark calculator. The same rule sets how much of the garden you lose. Be honest with yourself about that before the frame is ordered.

Should you dig down or build up for a play area?

Digging a play area down or building it up is a drainage decision first, because a pit in wet ground fills with water.

Dug down looks tidier. The surface sits flush with the lawn, there is no lip to trip on, and a low frame looks less dominant. But you have made a hole, and if the ground around it holds water after rain, the hole is where that water goes. Bark that sits in water rots from the bottom up and you will be replacing it in two winters rather than topping it up in five.

Built up is the safer bet on ground that drains slowly. The surface sits on top of the soil, water can get away underneath, and the bark stays dry. The cost is an edge, which has to be strong enough to hold 200mm of loose material under the pressure of children running at it. That is the next decision but one.

The test is simple. Dig a hole the size of a bucket where the play area will be, fill it with water, and see whether it has drained in a day. If it has not, build up. If you want to dig down anyway, the ground under the bark needs the same treatment as any other wet spot in a garden, and our guide to what a soakaway is is where to start.

What goes under a play area surface?

A heavy duty membrane goes under a play area surface, directly beneath the bark or chip, to keep the bark and the soil apart.

I know this one is argued about. Plenty of people will not put a sheet of plastic in their garden on principle, and I understand that. But the argument is usually about weed membrane under a flower border, where the membrane is doing very little. Under a play area it is doing something different. Without it, 200mm of bark works its way down into the soil over a couple of seasons, and the soil works its way up into the bark, and what you end up with is a thinner, muddier surface that never quite dries out. So I use a heavy duty membrane under every loose play surface, laid flat, pegged at the edges, with the joins overlapped by 150mm or so. Not the lightweight weed fabric, which tears the first time a child digs into it.

What I do not do is put a compacted stone sub-base under bark. A path wants a hard base under a thin surface. A play surface is the exact opposite, a deep soft layer that is meant to give when a child lands on it, and a hard layer close underneath undoes the point of it.

What is the best surface for a garden play area?

The best surface for a garden play area is certified play bark or play chip, because it is soft, affordable to lay deep and easy to top up.

The five bark and chip products that Outdoor Aggregate’s sell were all tested to the current play surfacing standard, BS EN 1177:2018, and every one of them is rated for a fall from over 3m at 100mm, 200mm and 300mm. So between bark and chip, the choice is not safety. It is durability, texture underfoot, how much comes indoors on socks, and how it looks. Chip is the finer, denser material and bark the chunkier one, with the nuggets chunkiest of all. The play bark range and play chip range pages put the grades side by side.

Sand is a different animal. It is brilliant in a sandpit and it is the one surface where the depth figure is a ceiling, not a floor. Sand deep enough for a child to tunnel into can collapse on them, so 300mm is the most I would ever lay, and I would rake it level often because it shifts more than any other loose fill.

Play gravel is the surface most people never consider, and it earns a look once the children are past the age of putting things in their mouths. Rounded pea gravel at 3 to 12mm, laid 300mm deep, absorbs a fall properly, and unlike bark it does not rot, does not feed anything and drains straight through after rain. Small hands will spray it across the lawn no matter how good your edging is, and I would not put it under a toddler slide, but for an eight-year-old on a climbing frame in a garden that already floods, it holds up better than anything organic.

Grass gets a fairer hearing than it deserves. For a toddler slide it is fine. Under a swing it is a mud pit by November and, in a dry summer, a lawn sets as hard as a path, which is the month the children are on it most.

Artificial grass on its own is a surface that looks tidy. It only becomes a safety surface when there is a rated shockpad underneath it, and the shockpad is a separate product with its own fall height figure. It also grazes knees and elbows very easily.

Rubber mulch does not rot, does not need topping up the same way and lasts a decade or more, but it has its problems including leaching of nasty chemicals into the garden and obviously inadvertently it gets eaten by children. Our guide to laying rubber mulch covers the job if that is the way you want to go.

How deep should play bark be?

Play bark is certified safe at 100mm, and I lay it at 200mm, because the extra is what gets used up over the following year. Three metres is the highest fall the equipment standard permits on any climbing frame, so there is nothing higher to test for. So why lay deeper than 100mm? Margin and added cushioning. The tested depth is the depth on the day it went down. Within a month it has settled by 10 to 15%. Within a year the bit under the swing is half what it was. Laying at 200mm means that after a year of use, the thinnest spot is still somewhere near the tested depth, rather than well below it.

Order 15% over the calculated volume as standard, and 20% for a deep surface, to cover that first month of settling. The play bark calculator does that sum for you and gives you the bag count for ease of ordering.

When topping up, check the thin spots first. Under the swing seat at the bottom of its arc, at the bottom of the slide, at the foot of the ladder. Those three places lose material ten times faster than the rest of the area, because that is where feet drag.

How do you keep play bark in place?

Play bark stays in place with a solid edge around the whole area and a mark on the frame legs that indicates when you need to rake.

The edge first. A loose surface 200mm deep, with children running at it, pushes outward all the time. Without something holding it, the first winter spreads it across the lawn and the mower does the rest. A play area edge has three jobs that a border edge does not: it has to hold back a deep loose fill under sideways pressure, it has to present nothing to trip over or fall onto, and it has to survive being climbed on. Timber sleepers and half-round log roll do all three. Anything with a sharp top edge, and anything that can be lifted out by a determined four-year-old, does not. Our edging a garden guide covers the materials.

Now the trick I picked up from school playgrounds, and it costs nothing. On the day the bark goes down, put a mark on every frame leg standing in it, at the surface. Tape, paint, a scratch with a screwdriver, it does not matter. From then on you never measure anything. If you cannot see the mark, leave it alone. If you can see it, pull the bark back in from the edges with a rake. If a good rake still leaves it showing, that is your cue to order a top-up. Ten seconds every time you walk past, and it is the only inspection a home play area needs.

Do cats and dogs use play areas as a toilet?

Cats use a sandpit as a litter tray and dogs foul in bark, and in both cases you cannot see it until a child has found it.

The sandpit is the easier one. A cover, put on every evening, solves nine tenths of it, and the older the children get the less the risk matters, because a child old enough to play in the sandpit unsupervised is usually old enough to have understood the problem. I would not rule out a sandpit because of cats, but aim for a cover.

Bark is harder, because dog mess on bark is pretty much invisible until it is on a shoe, and once it is stuck to bark it is nearly impossible to pick up. If you have a dog that uses the garden and small children who play on their hands and knees, that is a real argument against bark, and the answer is either a fence the dog cannot get past or a different surface.

What does a garden play area cost?

A garden play area costs three separate bills, ground work, surface and edge, but many DIYers only budget for the surface. The ground work is the one that varies most. On free-draining ground with a raised build it is a membrane and a few hours. On heavy clay with a dug-down pit it can include a soakaway, and that is a day’s digging before a bag of bark has been opened.

The surface is a straight sum once you know the area and the depth. Work out the impact area rather than the frame footprint, add the settling allowance, and the calculator gives you the bags. For scale, a bulk bag of Outdoor Aggregate’s Pine Play Bark starts at £142 including VAT and the softwood play chips at £122, and a single swing surfaced at 200mm is usually two to three bags. The mistake I have experienced most was when a client rdering for the footprint and then ringing back for the rest, which costs a second delivery.

The edge is the bill people forget, and it is not a small one on a play area of any size. Price it before you price the bark, because a play area with no edge is not finished, it is just started.

Next steps

Everything above is a decision you can make before a single bag arrives. Once they are made, the guides below take each one further. The play bark range and play chip range compare the grades we stock, all five certified to BS EN 1177:2018. The play bark calculator turns your area and depth into a bag count with the settling allowance built in. And the play surfaces category has the lot in one place, delivered on a pallet to the kerb.

If you would rather talk your play area through with a person, ring Outdoor Aggregates on 0330 043 7585. The office is open 7am to 7pm, seven days a week.

Have you ever put a play area in? Which surface did you go with, and how has it held up after a winter? Let us know in the comments.

FAQs

Do you need a membrane under play bark?

Play bark needs a heavy duty membrane underneath it, laid directly under the bark, to stop the bark and the soil mixing over time. Lightweight weed fabric tears too easily to do the job.

How deep should play bark be for a climbing frame?

Play bark under a climbing frame is certified for falls above 3m at 100mm. I lay it at 200mm so a year of settling and scuffing still leaves the tested depth under the frame.

Is grass safe under a swing?

Grass under a swing turns to bare mud within a season and bakes hard in a dry summer. It is fine for a toddler slide and a poor choice under a real fall height.

How much space do you need around a swing?

A swing needs 1.75m of clear surfaced ground in front of and behind it and 1.5m to each side, under BS EN 1176. The frame’s own instructions may ask for more.