Gardenvisit.com The Landscape Guide

16.13 Childrens Parks

Contents list

In the years before puberty, children appreciate purple space and brown space. One of the fathers of town and country planning, Patrick Geddes, had a special understanding of the males in this group, who love dirt, construction and exploration. He observed that in most parks:

... little girls may sit on the grass. But the boys? They are at most granted a cricket-pitch, or lent a space between football goals, but otherwise are jealously watched, as potential savages, who on the least symptom of their natural activities of wigwam-building, cave-digging, stream-damming, and so on must instantly be chevied away, and are lucky if not hounded out of the place. (Geddes, 1915)

A real children's playground?