Case Study

Natural Nursery Garden Transformation - Wild at Heart Day Nursery, Driffield

An exciting new space for early years toddlers and children to engage in outdoor play all day long!

Newby Leisure have spent the last couple of weeks completely transforming the outdoor, educational garden, at Wild at Heart Day Nursery.

After receiving such positive feedback from the school, it seems as though the pupils have wasted no time, and are already enjoying their new, natural playground design!

Bringing the area to life...

The main goal of this project was to bring this playground to life, by adding new surfacing, new timber play resources, but most of all, to encourage outdoor play and learning. I think we succeeded, don’t you?

To ensure that all genres of play were covered, it was decided to include a water play stream, a sand and cobble beach, a grass mound, and lots more. Meaning that the children are now able to enjoy water play, messy play, sand play and improve their physical ability. Along with enhancing many other useful skills!

Incorporated into this fantastic scheme, is a barked area, including multiple timber resources, some new and some existing.

Allowing little ones, the opportunity to take their imaginations to another level as they get stuck into making mud pies, using natural elements from their surroundings.

Other surfacing options used include artificial grass, block paving, rubber mulch, new pour surfacing and standard grass.

Adventure, Exploration and Imagination

Out of many of the fantastic features in this natural outdoor play environment, one includes the bespoke timber, rope bridge.

Used for access over the water play stream, this bridge leads from one zone of the playground to another. A superb feature to utilise during role play activities too!

Another being the wooden adventure tunnel, filled with soil and grass; allowing little ones to get stuck into nature play as they plant and pot with friends. A great resource to boost social interaction and also improve gross and fine motor skills as the children learn through play.

Early years education has never looked so good!