How to Make Your Backyard More Kid Friendly

Landscaping your home is an incredibly fun, but simultaneously stressful project. There are a lot of different factors to consider, and often you won’t even be able to think of all of them before you start working. Sometimes issues and concerns will present themselves to you as you’re working on the landscaping project. One such concern is making sure that your backyard is kid friendly.

If you don’t have children and don’t often invite over friends that have children, this probably isn’t something that matters to you. But if you have kids, there are a few things you may not have thought of yet, that you should consider.

Water Features may be dangerous

A beautiful addition to any yard is a water feature of some sort. Whether this is a fountain, a natural rock fountain, or a pond. These features are beautiful, but could pose a serious problem to children if there is a significant amount of water that can pool up. Children can drown in a very small amount of water, it doesn’t necessarily need to be deep water to pose a threat.

If you’re concerned, one of the best options to include a water feature in your yard is to install a simple rock feature with a pump underground. This way you can still have a water feature, but don’t have to worry about a child tripping into the accumulated water at the base.

Garden space

Having a garden, whether vegetable, herb, or flowers, can be a beautiful thing to add to your yard. These things aren’t necessarily dangerous to a child, but if you often have children running around your yard, understand that it’s possible they’ll trample through your garden on accident. Kids are naturally very curious! This is a great thing, except when they’re digging up your petunias because they wanted to “help”. There are a few ways you can avoid this. One great way is to have raised garden beds, so they’re out of the way. You can also put your gardens behind a short picketed fence(with a locked gate) so children can’t access it. A fence like this is always a beautiful addition. Or you can transfer all of your plants to window boxes.

Grass instead of rocks

Some people like having rock landscaping because it’s lower maintenance. However, this isn’t a very kid friendly environment, and a child could easily trip and cut themselves on the rocks while they’re playing. Although grass requires more attention, it’s a much more kid-friendly option for your backyard.