Designing Inclusive Outdoor Spaces

Welcome and housekeeping

Curtis: Welcome, friends and colleagues. If you signed up for the webinar on designing inclusive nature-based play environments, you are in the right place. Community Playthings has been working closely with Adam White and Andrée Davies of Davies White on a number of exciting projects, and what drew us to them was not simply their credentials, but their commitment to quality, children, sustainability, and inclusive nature-based play.

Curtis: Please add any questions in the chat as we go. Adam and Andrée will try to answer them in real time, and if anything is left over, their contact details will be shared afterwards so the conversation can continue.

Adam: We will begin with a little about our practice and how Andrée and I met, then look at the theory behind nature play and how we design spaces. After that we will share case studies, take a short break, return with more examples, and finish with what we call the glue that holds our projects together: playful planting.

How Davies White began

Adam: Andrée and I design playful, inclusive, biodiverse, and sustainable landscapes and gardens. We met more than twenty years ago while working for the environmental charity Groundwork. What really shaped us there was the idea of fostering ownership of green space, rather than imposing an ivory-tower design onto a community.

Adam: After a decade with the charity, we set up our own practice. One of our early landmark projects was Playscape Playful Landscapes at Hampton Court in 2007. At the time, much of the provision for children in the UK was still dominated by fenced-off equipment and metal kit. We had seen a very different, more landscape-led approach in Germany and Scandinavia, and wanted to show what was possible here.

Adam: That garden won a gold medal and the BBC People’s Choice award, and it sent us on a trajectory towards family-friendly green spaces. Later projects included the Commonwealth Games Legacy Park in Glasgow and extensive work with special schools, particularly with children with autism. Working with Dr Juli Crocombe helped us tailor landscapes much more carefully to children’s sensory and developmental needs.

Adam: When we returned to Hampton Court in 2017 with the Zoflora and Caudwell Children’s Wild Garden, we won gold again, along with People’s Choice and Best in Show. That response showed us there was a real appetite for landscapes that feel natural, child-centred, and inclusive.

Sustainability, advocacy, and careers

Adam: Alongside designing places, we try to give something back. During my time as President of the Landscape Institute, I had the privilege of presenting Sir David Attenborough with a lifetime achievement award and making him an honorary landscape architect. He has been an enormous inspiration to us both.

Andrée: Over the past few years I have also worked with Deborah Meaden and the Royal Horticultural Society, judging the sustainability credentials of products and places at the Chelsea Flower Show. That role constantly brings me back to the same question: how do we make sure what we create is good for the planet as well as good for people?

Andrée: That starts with observation. We do not arrive at a site assuming everything should be cleared away and replaced. We look carefully at what is already there, how it can be reused, what materials can stay on site, and how waste can be reduced. Nature is one of the stakeholders in every project, even though it cannot speak for itself.

Adam: That thinking also feeds into the Choose Landscape campaign, which we launched to help young people channel their concern for climate and nature into careers that can make a difference. We promote that message across our projects, from very young children right through to teenagers deciding what they might do next.

Why contact with nature matters

Adam: A lot of the thinking behind our work is supported by books that have shaped us. Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods and Vitamin N are key texts, and Florence Williams’s The Nature Fix is a particularly accessible way into the subject. The central message is simple: regular contact with nature matters. A little every day, more each week, a deeper dose monthly, and immersive wilderness when possible can all make a difference to health and wellbeing.

Adam: This is not new wisdom. Florence Nightingale wrote about the restorative effect of looking out onto greenery, and Roger Ulrich’s work later helped explain why views of nature calm us and support recovery. We still have to keep making the case, but the evidence is there: green space is not a luxury. It is part of what helps people feel better, think more clearly, and recover more quickly.

Nature literacy and plant blindness

Adam: We were struck when the junior dictionary removed words such as “acorn” and “bluebell” and replaced them with more digital vocabulary. Books such as The Lost Words and Wild Child have helped push back against that trend by reconnecting children with the language of the natural world.

Adam: When we run nature-detective exercises, most people immediately spot birds, mammals, or insects first. That is part of what is now often called plant blindness: the tendency to overlook plants and fungi even though they are fundamental to the whole system. Children need help noticing the living landscape around them, even in urban settings.

The shrinking freedom to roam

Adam: One of the clearest illustrations of why this work matters is the way children’s freedom to roam has shrunk over generations. A child in the early twentieth century might have ranged widely across a neighbourhood or beyond. Later generations saw that area get smaller and smaller: from the wider landscape, to the street, to the back garden, and in many cases now to the bedroom.

Adam: That loss of freedom, combined with the benefits of nature we have just discussed, pushed us to ask a practical question: what can we do? That question sits behind all of our work.

Designing for play rather than shopping for equipment

Adam: When people talk about play, they usually reach first for words such as fun, adventure, excitement, exploring, and learning. All of those matter. But when we design play landscapes, we also have to think about challenge, competition, uncertainty, risk, and fear in healthy and manageable forms. If children do not experience those things during play, adult life delivers them in a much harsher way.

Adam: Children’s play is serious work. They are testing themselves, reading the environment, negotiating with others, and building judgement. That is why we encourage clients not to begin with a shopping list of swings, slides, and spring toys. Start instead with the experience you want children to have, and the different kinds of play the site should support.

Andrée: Our starting point is placemaking. We look at the sun and shade, access, the surface materials, and the existing living community of the site, as well as the emotional quality of the place. Is there somewhere for active, noisy play? Somewhere quieter for children who prefer smaller groups? Somewhere that feels welcoming to a range of personalities and ages? Those questions come before we start placing paths, structures, or planting.

Accessibility, inclusion, and the whole journey

Andrée: Accessibility and inclusion are fundamental. In public projects, that starts before anyone reaches the play space itself. Can people park nearby? Is there an accessible route? Is there somewhere to change, use the toilet, or get a drink? Once people arrive, the details matter too: surfaces, gradients, transitions, and whether the place feels emotionally welcoming, not merely technically compliant.

Andrée: We work with PiPA to test how inclusive our play spaces really are, and that helps refine our thinking. The best inclusive design is often not obvious at a glance. It is not about separating children into different parts of a site; it is about designing spaces where everyone can be together and play together.

Adam: Sometimes the most effective features are quite simple. A ground-level trampoline can allow a child using a wheelchair to experience bouncing. Willow pods can create calm, enclosed retreats that are especially useful for some autistic children. Basket swings, for example, are far more inclusive when the path network allows a child to get close enough to transfer easily and comfortably.

Materials, surfacing, and myth-busting

Adam: Loose materials such as sand are often surrounded by myths. In our experience, many of those fears are exaggerated. Larger sand areas tend to work better than tiny token sand pits, and they generate extraordinary play in their own right. Children sprinkle sand on leaves, make patterns, shape forms, and use it in ways adults rarely anticipate.

Andrée: At the same time, surfaces have to respond to context. In a school in central London, where children are in uniform and the site must work every day in all weathers, we may need durable, permeable surfaces such as bonded gravel, together with carefully placed areas of impact surfacing. The point is balance: enough robustness for everyday use, enough permeability for water, and enough contact with soil, plants, and natural material for the landscape to stay alive.

Adam: Artificial grass is not something we treat as a replacement for living grass. Where we use it at all, we use it as a surface material in very specific high-wear locations, such as the end of a slide or a heavily used desire line. It has a place, but only when used deliberately and sparingly.

Community engagement and funding

Andrée: We involve communities throughout the design process. That may mean workshops, model-making, sketching, site walks, or digital tools such as simple virtual-reality viewers. The aim is to help people understand what is possible, raise ambition, and build a shared sense of ownership.

Adam: Narrative is often part of that process too. If a site has heritage or a strong local story, we can use that. If it does not, we may build one with the children. On some projects we have worked with authors, illustrators, and storytellers so that the landscape becomes something children can imagine themselves into.

Andrée: Funding is always part of the conversation. Depending on the project, support may come from lottery funding, landfill-related grants, planning gain, charitable trusts, retailers’ community funds, or school fundraising. Often the most useful first step is not immediate construction but a clear master plan. Once people can see a compelling proposal, funding conversations become much easier.

Case study: The Caudwell Children’s Wild Garden

Adam: The Caudwell Children’s Wild Garden was a turning point for us. It was designed for children with disabilities, with a particular focus on autism, and developed with Dr Juli Crocombe. The challenge was to create a garden that felt wild and immersive while still being genuinely accessible and inclusive.

Adam: The design moved from calmer, more open spaces with clear sightlines towards areas with richer sensory stimulation, allowing different children to gravitate towards the experience that suited them. Over time we developed a much bigger understanding of how planting, enclosure, air movement, surfaces, and routes all contribute to a child’s experience of a landscape.

Andrée: That project also showed how powerful collaboration can be. Materials were donated, volunteers helped build the garden, and the process itself created a strong network of relationships. The garden later became a permanent feature at the Caudwell International Children’s Centre, which meant its impact could continue long after the show finished.

Adam: We also used creative engagement around the project, including illustration, animation, and storytelling. Those tools helped communicate not just what the garden looked like, but how it might feel to a child moving through it.

Case study: Earlsfield Primary School

Andrée: At Earlsfield Primary School in south-west London, we began by asking children to map how they already used their playground. They drew their routes through the site, showed us where they spent time, and highlighted the areas they ignored. That immediately revealed which parts of the playground were underused and which had potential.

Andrée: From that we developed a zone plan and then a detailed proposal that responded to the school’s budget. When clients do not have the funds to build everything at once, a master plan is still valuable because it shows how tree planting, surfacing, structures, and future phases can fit together over time.

Adam: One of the most useful moments in that project came when a child asked for the Eden Project. Adults laughed, but we did not dismiss it. What the child really wanted was the feeling of that kind of space, and we were able to find a geodome greenhouse that captured something of that spirit. On another project, a child asked for a roller coaster. What they really wanted was the sensation of movement and excitement, so we designed a path with curves and undulations that gave their scooters that feeling.

Adam: That is the key point: listen for the experience underneath the request. If you only hear the object, you miss the real design opportunity.

Letting play spaces look lived in

Adam: We often point to examples in the Netherlands and Germany because they show a different attitude to play. In one Dutch playground beside a tidal river, water periodically covers part of the site and then recedes, leaving mud and puddles behind. Children love it. Parents may be less enthusiastic, but it offers direct engagement with the landscape, with weather, with change, and with the material reality of place.

Andrée: That matters because a successful nature playground rarely looks immaculate. Plants are moved, trampled, and picked. Mud appears. Materials shift. A landscape that supports rich play can look a little untidy, and we need to be comfortable with that. Too often, people imagine a perfect, static image when the real goal should be a living, evolving place.

Case study: Back to Nature and other public projects

Adam: That tension between visual perfection and lived reality came up strongly when we co-designed a Chelsea Flower Show garden with Catherine. The public response was enormous, and the garden later evolved through other versions, including permanent work at RHS Wisley and a smaller but equally meaningful garden for an NHS setting in Devon.

Adam: What made that project special was that it was rooted in memory and story. Different plants were chosen because they connected with personal experiences from childhood, family, and outdoor life. That is often when landscapes become memorable: when they carry emotional meaning rather than simply aesthetic appeal.

Andrée: We also work on projects where the landscape has to help unlock support for much larger changes. In one school project, for example, a new classroom building on a sports field was controversial. Our response was to wrap the building in a micro-forest, using diverse planting to cool the building, filter light, support biodiversity, and create an outdoor environment that could actively support teaching and learning.

Playful planting: the glue that holds everything together

Adam: Planting is often treated as a finishing touch, but for us it is fundamental. It is the glue that ties a project together. We are always looking for plants that are playful, robust, resilient, and appropriate to the site, while also being safe enough for the age group using the space.

Andrée: We think in layers: trees first, then shrubs, then perennials, ground cover, and bulbs. We consider seasonality, scent, texture, movement, and sound. We also think about wildlife value, aftercare, and how planting might support the curriculum. The goal is to help children notice individual plants rather than seeing everything as an undifferentiated green blur.

Andrée: That means selecting plants with distinct forms and sensory qualities. Some have soft, textured leaves; some carry winter scent; some have seed heads that rattle in the wind; some hold raindrops beautifully; some are edible; and some trigger memories through smell. Those qualities invite curiosity and conversation.

Adam: Professionally we use Latin plant names, because they travel across languages and avoid confusion. With children, though, we care much more about the sensory story: what a plant smells like, what it feels like, whether it glistens after rain, whether it sounds different in wind, or whether it reminds them of sweets, toothpaste, sherbet lemons, or a walk with their family.

Plants and ideas highlighted in the webinar

Andrée: Some of the examples we discussed included willow for tunnels and woven structures; Lady’s mantle for the way it holds raindrops; winter-scented shrubs for cold months; wild strawberries as a tough edible groundcover; and trees such as katsura, often called the candyfloss tree, for the distinctive burnt-sugar scent it can release in autumn.

Adam: We also talked about plants whose smells connect immediately with everyday life, such as mint, lemon balm, wintergreen, and Pelargonium “Cola Bottles”. That sort of association helps children engage very quickly. It turns planting from background decoration into something memorable and playful.

Andrée: Where food is involved, clarity is important. We often create designated edible areas so children learn which plants are intended for tasting and which are simply there to be enjoyed in other ways. We also filter all planting lists for toxicity and avoid the highly problematic species. The aim is not to create fear, but to design responsibly and teach well.

Practical advice for small spaces and tight budgets

Adam: Even tiny urban sites can do something meaningful. One of the simplest ideas we shared was a living den made from sunflower seeds, runner beans, and clover. Each child can start a sunflower, the plants can then be arranged in a circle, runner beans can climb the stems, and clover can create a soft layer below. Within a relatively short time, children have made a place of their own with a yellow roof overhead.

Andrée: That kind of project matters because it is achievable. It can be done with a packet of seeds, a little sunlight, and care. Often a small success is what helps sceptical adults see what is possible and become more confident about larger changes.

Final reflections and closing message

Andrée: In response to questions, we noted that the right plant palette depends on context. On ecologically sensitive sites, native plants may be essential. In many schools and public parks, a thoughtful mix of native and non-native species is appropriate, provided it is suited to the place and used responsibly.

Adam: The statement that best sums up the purpose behind all of this came from Sir David Attenborough: if children do not grow up understanding nature, they will not appreciate it; if they do not appreciate it, they will not protect it; and if they do not protect it, who will? That is why playful landscapes may look joyful, but they also need to be taken seriously by funders, decision-makers, and custodians.

Curtis: Thank you to everyone who joined us. A recording of the webinar will be shared afterwards, together with a short survey and an opportunity to register interest in future masterclasses. The conversation, as we said at the start, is only just beginning.

 

Resources mentioned during the webinar

• Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods
• Richard Louv, Vitamin N
• Florence Williams, The Nature Fix
• Florence Williams, Heartbreak
• Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris, The Lost Words
• Additional resources from Kew Gardens, the RHS, PiPA, and Learning Through Landscapes were also referenced.

Funding routes mentioned during the webinar

• Lottery funding
• Landfill-related grant schemes
• Planning gain / Section 106 contributions
• The Ernest Cook Trust
• Learning Through Landscapes
• Retailer community funds such as Asda and Tesco
• School and community fundraising supported by a clear master plan