Your kids get active, sweaty, and rough-and-tumble on the playground. With all of that energy combined with growing muscle and motor skills, accidents happen! Ramming speed collisions! Missed monkey bar grabs! Even over-eager parents may get into the action.
Disclaimer: at WillyGoat, we aren’t encouraging this behavior, just merely recognizing that it happens.
Thank you very Mulch
Playground borders are critical for creating and maintaining a space playground. To protect the children on your playground you should consider spreading rubber mulch, rubber pellets, or wood mulch to cushion the blow of a fall. Another side effect is that it will slow children down while they run around the playground.
Protecting Children and Your Investment
Once you have mulch in place, you should contain it with playground borders or timbers. At WillyGoat, we have both plastic playground borders and rubber border edging by Rubberific.
We carry plastic playground borders constructed through a blow-molding process, which leaves the borders lightweight yet durable. These plastic borders can be hammered into place with the included ground spikes. For your convenience, our playground edge borders also include a ruler stamped right onto the plastic. That way, you can always know the depth of your mulch. These borders come in 8 and 12-inch heights.
If you want a different material and look to your playground mulch border, consider the rubber border edging by Rubberific. These Rubberific timbers come in green, brown, black, and red and have heights of 4, 6, and 8 inches. They are made in the USA from recycled rubber, bendable, and very easy to install with hammering of rebar anchors.
For other options, check out our wood border kits or the faux stone timbers for a different look.
Add it up!
Now that you’ve chosen plastic or recycled rubber, you need to add up your dimensions. Think about the safety zone you’ll need around your equipment, add them up, and divide by the length of the playground edging to get to the number of borders you need. The plastic borders are generally 52 inches in length and the rubber borders are 8 feet in length. Sizes are prominently displayed on the product pages but feel free to reach out if you need help sizing things up for your needs.
Don’t Forget
When ordering your borders, don’t forget to add ADA ramps, landscape fabric, rubber mulch, and border fillers to close up any gaps. The landscape fabric will keep weeds from poking through your mulch fill and ramps will make your playground accessible and inclusive. Also, rubber kick mats are far and away the best method for protecting your mulch under swing sets and at the end of slides.
Install and Fill ‘er Up
Installation is a cinch -- hammer the spikes, rebar, or holders into place, set your borders, and spread your mulch. Pay particular attention to the fall height recommendations of the mulch or surfacing of your choice. The amount of surfacing or mulch you insert depends upon the height of the highest fall, the surface area you are covering, as well as the cushioning properties of the material you choose.
Your Park is Ready for Action
Again, WillyGoat doesn’t condone reckless running and playing, we just know how children (and some adults) play.
Thanks for your interest in learning more about the playground borders and ramps we offer! If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at 888.920.4628.
