5 DIY Garden Features to Bring Extra Delight to Outdoor Play

Adding fun and magical garden features for kids can help to turn a typical family garden into something extra-special, a place where kids will always be delighted to spend some time. As spring arrives and the weather begins to warm, it is a good time to think about what fun features you might add to your outdoor space. 

Many of the very best ideas do not involve buying anything except plants; plants alone can make for some great child-friendly spaces. And purchasing the plants or seeds that you need can be relatively inexpensive or even free. Aside from plants, it is often possible to make fun new features using only natural or reclaimed materials, and not anything new that you need to buy.

To help you make the most of your family garden, here are some plant-based garden features that you might add to enhance your family's enjoyment of the space:

Fruit Tunnel Hideout

When kids have secret, shaded pathways to explore in a garden, they can certainly feel that they are going on an adventure. A tunnel can be fun to hide in, to run or crawl through, or even to ride a bike or tricycle through, perhaps if the space permits. 

There are, of course, plenty of different ways that you might make a tunnel. But one fun idea is to double up on functions and create a tunnel that not only provides a space below but which also provides you and your family with fruit. 

You might plant a couple of rows of fruit trees, like step-over apple trees, and train these into an arch shape. 

You might create your tunnel with rows of cane fruits like raspberries or thornless blackberries tied into an arch support (which could be made with natural branches from your garden or reclaimed materials). 

You might also prune a range of other berry bushes to create lower tunnels for kids to play below and go through.

Wildflower Meadow Maze

Another idea if you like a more open and sunny garden might be to add a play feature within a wild lawn or wildflower meadow area. 

One fun way to encourage kids to get out into the heart of a meadow area and witness its wildlife and plants up close is to mow or scythe a maze into it that kids can run or walk through. 

You can create mazes with many different plants, but a wildflower meadow can be perfect for little kids and won't take a huge length of time to become established. 

Sow seeds this spring, and while the meadow might not have reached peak biodiversity, it should be attractive and ready to mow for pathways by the summer. 

Hugelkultur 'Sleeping Giant'

Building hugelkultur raised beds can be a good choice when growing your own food at home, especially in more arid areas or anywhere water retention is a priority. But hugelkultur mounds can also be used to grow ornamental plants as well as edible ones. 

One fun idea is to pile up logs and branches as you would usually do when creating a hugelkultur bed but to pile them up to form the shape of a sleeping giant. Plant a range of low-growing, native groundcover plants onto your new hugelkultur mounds, and you can make your giant come to life, giving him a face, clothing, etc.

Kids will love to express their creative side as you make your giant's features together—and they can play on and around the mounds once they are ready and plants have matured. 

Bean Fort

Even if you don't have a large enough garden to try one of the ideas above, you might have a sunny corner in which you can create a living den. 

An idea like this is simple and easy to make by tying bamboo canes or natural branches together at the top with natural twine to create a dome or tent-like structure. You can then grow beans up the posts or canes to create a leafy screen to hide the inside of the den from prying eyes through the summer months. 

Secret Fairy Garden

This final idea can be employed at a range of scales—even in the very smallest of gardens and even if you do not have an outside space at all. With a range of small flowering plants and mosses, natural twigs, cones, and other items scavenged from the natural surroundings, you can create a little miniature world where fairies may love to dwell. 

Either a tiny fairy garden in a container, in a shaded and private corner of an outside area, or a larger flower-filled fairy wonderland in a garden with little fairy doors and pathways can bring magic front and center in any family garden.