Projects – Play Areas
APES Playground
John O’Driscoll and the award–winning Adventure Playground Engineers (APES) specified reclaimed Greenheart timber for this ambitious design ‘Kite Park Playground’ in Kidbrooke – for Berkeley Homes. The tropical timber was reclaimed by Ashwells at the request of building and civil engineering contractor Bam Nuttall during the 2018 Woolwich Ferry upgrade project.
Groundworks
We had the pleasure of working with the Landscape Architects, Adam and Andree, from Groundworks, West London.
Through their innovation, this amazing, award winning, play area was created.
We sourced the trees from local tree surgeons and provided the tropical hard wood to make the cycle stands and bridge.
Timberplay: Castle Hill
This play area was built on the site of a quarry situated in Ebbsfleet Valley near the Bluewater Shopping centre. During previous works, evidence was unearthed that packs of early humans hunted the area, with bone and flint pieces showing that the group were able to successfully hunt and butcher an elephant for its meat. In keeping with the history of the site we were asked to supply the timber to replicate a rib cage of a large mammal. The timber for this project came from an Oak Tree that was felled to make way for a car park near Stansted in Essex!
Timberplay: Millfield Park
Aileen Shackell, Landscape Designer and Phil Doyle, Play Consultant, won a competition to transform this park in Hackney, using a very limited budget. We worked with them to prepare and supply the central play-tree feature, the tree sections surrounding the sand area and the feature entrance. All tree sections were sourced from Tree Surgeons waste and managed forests. They also used various play features provided and installed by Timberplay.
The Science Museum: Wonder Lab
For this project we were approached by muf architects. They required a tree to become part of the New Children’s Wonder lab project at the Science Museum, in London. The tree was to become a magnetic, interactive play feature for children. We contacted a local woodland that had been unmanaged since the last world war, but thankfully was now in the process of being managed once more. The tree seen here was due to be cut down as part of this process. The tree had to be kiln dried, debarked, sanded and then cut into three sections and jointed. These enable it to fit in the Science Museums lift! Once in position we carefully re-joined the sections.
Rachel Keeling Nursery
This wonderfully natural play area was designed by Sioned Williams Landscape Design for PLAYLINK, and installed by Ben Rimmer DNA-Play. We supplied the edging for the sand pit, Oak stepping logs and the Oak tree play feature. All material was sourced from local Tree Surgeon’s waste.
