PLAYGROUNDS IN PARKS 



be large transplanted specimens so as to afford the benefit of considerable shade 

 at the outset. As an added feature of landscape interest, there lias been in- 

 cluded in the plan a small sunken flower garden which will come within the 

 fenced-in area. This may be left open, if found practicable, but if necessarily 

 closed, may still be overlooked from the playground walk bordering it on one 

 side." 



The foregoing is applicable to the planting problem of most play- 

 grounds. The illustration shows how much may be accomplished in 

 giving a park-like character to an otherwise bare playground, without 

 in any way interfering with its utility. 



PLAY AREAS AND PLAYGARDENS 



The German cities seem to have handled the matter of play areas 

 with the least apparent or conscious effort. As already mentioned, 

 they have a habit of assigning all unused or left-over corners in the 

 parks to sand areas for the children, which they screen off from the 

 rest of the park and furnish with ample number of seats for those 

 accompanying the children. In this country we are coming more and 

 more to provide sand boxes throughout the parks in a somewhat similar 

 fashion, but the tendency is to place the sand box in the most con- 

 spicuous place rather than in the least noticeable. 



Especially commendable and noteworthy in the German parks are 

 what are designated as Spielplatz and Kindergartens. The Spielplatz 

 are merely open areas, sometimes in gravel, frequently in grass when 

 the area is large enough to serve more as an open field, and the children 

 may be seen there playing familiar games, the sort that are gotten up 

 on the spin' of the moment and require no apparatus other than the 

 nimble limbs and wits of the children playing. In addition to this 

 there has been developed the charming idea of the Kindergarten, de- 

 signed expressly for the children, in which grown-ups are not allowed 

 to enter unless accompanied by a child. This restriction is not rigidty 



162 



