Last month I had the fun pleasure of building a mini “River” with volunteers during a great natural playscape community build at The Butterfly House on the campus of the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, VA. I thought y’all might be interested in the process. Take a peek!
Here we are starting out on a gradual hill about 18″ above the tricycle track grade. We ran a water line extension to this point to plug in our earthplay Water Tower as the water source.
I raked a 6″ deep x 3′ wide path for the river to take and we put down a gravel base and shaped metal “hardware cloth” over top as the reinforcing for the concrete. (the round rocks you see were just to hold the cloth down as we pinned it in place)
Here comes the concrete. We had one team mixing, a wheelbarrower bringing it to the river location, then a team of concreters smoothing and troweling it in place, followed by a group of folks getting to do the fun work of adding marbles boulders and designs in the wet concrete!
Here you can see the back of the EarthPlay WATER TOWER. (and here you can see more pictures and a video of it in action!)
Kids adding fun marble-mosaics too!
a couple of the fun up-close marble design details:
Stay tuned for further pictures of “The River” in action!
This is wonderful! I can see that you had several wonderful volunteers to help in this project. It is amazing when a vision comes together. I am really happy for the children that will be exploring and enjoying their new mini playscape river. Congratulations!
Mellie
Yachats, OR.
thanks Mellie!! oh yes – we had LOTS of volunteers. the river decorating volunteers were from a local highschool (plus the two kiddies!) it was very cool to see it all take shape over the course of a couple days. lots of people make lots of hard work a lot of fun!
Looks great!! What a lovely idea!
This is a beautiful installation! Love the community comradery, as well as the authentic child creation present. Thank you so much for sharing!
Looks exciting. I hope/pray that they will not get into any issues with playground inspection and city/county!!!! Oh. good gravy there are rocks in the river.
thanks Jenny! you’re welcome! this is one of my favorite types of projects to do. some basic technical stuff (concrete, prep, etc) then mostly organic shapes and free-flowing creativity – fun stuff for a group of people – and kids!
what’s wrong with Rocks Rachel?
Hi Rusty I’ve been missing your blog etc since my hotmail went down. Please note my new address and keep me updated on your amazing work. I was especially impressed by your snaking path. When Jimi Jolley died the kids and staff at the New Ark Adventure Playground made a long path like yours in his memory, with a totem pole made of plant pots, drain pipes etc alongside.
I love it! How fun for the kiddos. I was wanting to do the same thing in our play yard. I love the ideas of Marbles. Awesome job!