Childcare

Custom Playground Design & Build

Earthscape is an award-winning custom wood playground company based in Elmira, Ontario, Canada. We specialize in the conceptual design, site design, construction and installation of bespoke natural wood playgrounds. Our playground designs incorporate a combination of natural elements and artistic climbable play sculptures that stimulate both the development of the physical body and the imagination. We provide children with a holistic play experience and connection to nature that is too often missing from modern urban lifestyles.

Design is at the heart of what we do, but it’s only half of who we are as a company. Once the playground designs are complete, we bring them to life with specialized carpentry and construction knowledge. Working on a project from design to installation empowers us to provide and ensure the highest quality playgrounds. That’s because we design playgrounds that are tailored to our construction techniques. Our designers and engineers are involved through the building, fabrication and installation process to ensure that the design vision is met. As a bespoke playground company that designs modern custom wood playgrounds, our work is focused on destination playgrounds, daycare, child care, landscape architects, city park playgrounds, neighbourhood parks, and municipal parks, as well as schools and other public commercial playground work.

Custom Wood Adventure Playgrounds

Custom Bespoke natural Playgrounds

As a custom playground company, our bespoke playground designs and playground equipment are unique and full of creativity, vibrancy, and innovation. Our playgrounds and parks reflect the history, values, character, personality, and identity of the clients and communities that play there. If you have a dream and design vision, we can make it reality.  We work directly with landscape architects in a collaborative design process to come up with concepts and themes to tell stories, reflect history or speak to a theme. We bring your brilliant playground concepts to life.

Natural Wood Playgrounds with character

When you think about your favourite childhood play experience, what comes to mind? Perhaps you remember collecting sticks in the woods? Or maybe it was family time at a beach, hiking in a local park or digging for bugs in the garden? It’s likely that some or most of those memories involve being outdoors with family and friends. That is because simply being outside, with the freedom to explore and discover, is a formative and important experience for all children. They need unstructured, non-prescriptive play experiences where they can investigate, experiment, create, test their boundaries, and imagine with dramatic play. Kids are fascinated by the natural world: climbing trees, swinging on tire swings, whistling in blades of grass, making dandelion necklaces and running up and down hills on landform and topography. Increasingly sedentary lifestyles are contributing to a generation of children who lack opportunities for this type of play and therefore fall short of physical, social, emotional, and cognitive developmental milestones.

We are a custom wood playground company builds playgrounds around the world using natural materials – especially wood.  The playgrounds are adventurous and challenging.  What is a natural playground? Natural wood playgrounds or adventure playgrounds, authentically connect children to nature and the physical world by offering and affording environments made of wooden logs, grass, rocks, boulders, pathways, trees, plants, water and sand. These play areas and spaces mimic play in a forest, ravine, field, meadow, and other natural surroundings by providing similar sensory experiences and non-prescriptive play value. Most importantly, they encourage children to use their imaginations, get dirty, take risks and surprise their senses. Children who experience assessing risk, taking risks, experiencing failure, mastering their surroundings and learning through play tend to experience greater happiness, increased physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development, spend more time outdoors, have better positive social relationships, gain confidence, become comfortable with their bodies and the movement of their bodies through the environment and become more well-adjusted. These learned experiences and developmental gains can be carried into adulthood to produce happier and more productive people.

Natural playgrounds are developmentally beneficial to children, kids, supervisors, and adults. Custom bespoke playgrounds contribute to the character of a city, the personality and history, and local flavour. Play spaces can be gathering spaces for the community, and input from locals, residents, and visitors can enhance the design process and resulting playground design. A well-designed custom wood playground can establish and reinforce urban identity, community values, and connection to nature; it can attract visitors and residents to participate in the public realm, invite people to stay and encourage repeat visitors. Beautiful wood playgrounds are the best playgrounds in the world.

Non-prescriptive play experiences and equipment invite children to run, climb, dig, pretend, learn and hide, while also offering opportunities to sit quietly, reflect, question, inquire, and observe. The goal and objective is to create meaningful, attractive, beautiful, creative, unique natural spaces where children – and adults – are stimulated by nature, colours, themes, storytelling, water and structures that inspire creativity, discovery, and fantasy.