A friend has set up a kid play area under their laurel + gorgeous old rhododendron. Most of the time the hammock and obstacle course line are not loaded with weight. Obstacle course claims to have these green "tree protector" pieces of foam; hammock does not.
- How bad is this for these trees and on what time scale? Is "We'll have to be diligent and move it every year" just fine?
- What are good alternatives for anchoring play equipment like this (ideally specific product names/links if you have them)?
Zone 9 Pacific Northwest
by -Larix-
5 Comments
Just tell them to drill a lag bolt through them.
/s
That is cool. I wouldn’t be too worried about it, move the slings around every year or 3. Kids will be grown before it’s much of a concern. I personally love seeing trees utilized as play spaces. Lots of varying degrees and may not always be ideal for the tree health, but anything to get kids outside. Hell I’d sooner see kids building mulch volcanos for fun in a big FU to chronically online arborists than playing video games.
I had a slack line set up between two elms for my kids during all of Covid. The only noticeable change when I pulled of the straps was that the lichen disappeared underneath. If I was a tree I would rather be used by playing kids than used in literally any other conceivable way. Let the kids have a cool tree fort.
Its fine.
It’s fine. Just adjust the straps or swap branches every year. I personally would just take them down in the Winter and set them back up in the spring. Winter is really hard on everything outdoors anyway and they will extend the life of their playset and hammocks if they do this.