Anyone made garden toys / play area for kids

I need to make some activities for my daughter in the garden. I thaught of an big plastic toy box for a sandpit and another for water play (I have lids). Could I use another two as raised beds for her to plant? I'm sure u creative guys will have better ideas? I'm on a tight budget and space is a bit limited. She already has two apple trees in pots. Blueberry bush raspberries etc she does garden well she is 4

 

Well, my garden is turning into an adventure park, all on the tighest possible budget (most of the stuff out there was free, throwaway stuff).

There's the willow house and tunnel, made of living willow. I'm lucky in that my dad started growing it years ago, so I get what I need for free, but it is very cheap really anyway.

There's the fort/platform thingy, which is made of old decking that a friend was chucking out. It has ladders leading up to it, made out of old decking too, a slide coming down off it, and a wobbly bridge connecting it to the willow tunnel which leads to the willow house. The wobbly bridge is just two ropes (found on washed up on the beach) tied between four posts, and then loads of short planks of wood secured to it.

My dad gave me a dilapidated old Little Tykes play thing with slides, steps and a tunnel. It is too worn out to rebuild in its original state, so the parts will be incorporated into the play area I've already built so far.

A mate gave me an old tractor tyre, which is soon to become a sort of tunnel thing (half sunk, upright, into the ground).

The latest addition is a seesaw, made out of a leylandii trunk that I cleaned up and sanded smooth, then bolted securely to two car tyres, on which it pivots. Weather and time permitting, that's getting painted today, as per the spec given to me by the lad (he wants it green and orange striped).

Another friend gave us a little tykes play house, and bought stuff consists of a swing, a slide and a sand pit.

The garden is laid out such that there are hiding places and 'secret ways' (little paths that are no obvious), and I let the lad choose what to plant and where (within reason), and let him actively take part in the whole thing.

I should say though, I'm not the creator of any of this. I am merely the muscles for the job (and the responsible adult for using sharp tools and power tools). I might drop in the odd idea, but most of the ideas come from my son. I'm more liked the (unpaid) hired help, building the garden that my son wants. Yet it is all cunningly arranged so that it is still a garden to be enjoyed by all, young and old.

Just talk to your daughter, let your imaginations lose, and just build things

 

Wow he sure is talented and so are u! No strength to tackle some things but will def look at making a wigwam / sunshade again.

 

@Bilbo675 has made a few things i seem to recall

 

Bilbo won't get the alert you intended unfortunately, the tagging system is currently broken. Maybe drop him a PM?

Thanks But all kids are talented. It is only the mundanity of adulthood that crushes their imagination. That's why its best (in my opinion) to nurture and support their imagination at every opportunity. When I was little, my dad made the most of what little he had to stimulate my imagination, and all I'm doing is attempting to do the same for my lads, in the hope that if/when they become dads themselves, they remember their own childhood and try to give their kids the same

 

If those are located next to one another you'll get water in the sand and sand in the water.

 

That's all part of the fun my son deliberately mixes the two sides together. I'm never quite sure why, but every time I check he seems to be having fun and doing no harm, so I just leave him to get on with it. After a while (a few weeks) the whole thing turns into a mess, with bits of twigs and mud and dead insects and all sorts in it, so then the old sand just goes on the ground, I buy him some new sand, and he takes great pleasure in cleaning his sand pit out with the hose before I just let him shovel the new sand in.

 

My daughter would get buckets of water from her paddling pool, pour them into her dry sand then sit in it whilst stirring it up with a small and proudly inform us she was "making pastry". Then it would go all green and horrible and get put in a raised bed, another 3 bags of play sand would go in (we were both working then, so the cost was nothing to us) and the minute we weren't watching the same thing would happen again. Happy memories......

 

That's a good idea. I'd better not mention it to the lad just yet though, I've got at least a year's worth of work already lined up for me