Keeping Your Garden Tidy and Safe For Children

Spring Cleaning Week is about tidying the whole house, that means the garden too. The garden is possibly your child’s favourite part of the house. Within its confines, they can escape the house, go on adventures, and play games. Your lawn is a football pitch, the tree a climbing frame, the pool a shark infested ocean.
​This outdoor play is extremely important for their development, but how can you ensure their safety? In a large garden, you may not be able to keep an eye on them at all times. From storing away garden furniture, to life saving devices by the pool, here’s how you can ensure your child’s safety in the garden.

Storing Away Equipment
If you like to keep your garden neat and tidy, you probably have a number of dangerous items in your possession. Strimmers, mowers, hedge trimmers, chainsaws - to name just a few - can be potentially fatal if picked up by a curious child. Power tools and heavy furniture can also pose a risk.
The simplest solution is to have a shed, locked and bolted that your child does not have access to. Inside the shed, put dangerous equipment on a high up shelf where it cannot fall. Children learn by example. If you treat a tool as if it is extremely dangerous, your kids will view it as such and stay away.

Pool Safety
If you are lucky enough to have a pool, then you have an added responsibility. Communal pools always have safety signs, with rules such as ‘no running’. They also have a lifeguard keeping a careful watch on excitable children.
Your home pool safety approach should be no different. Younger children should never use the pool unsupervised, especially if they are weak swimmers. For this reason, the pool should be in a clearly visible part of the garden. Common sense  rules of no running, no diving in shallow water, and no electronics near the water should apply.

Securing the Perimeter
For when your child wants to explore the garden alone, it is important to make sure that they know where the boundaries are. If your garden is secured with a bush, check regularly for gaps. To keep your garden completely secure, run chicken wire around the boundaries. Ensure gates are strong, with robust locks. This stops your child escaping onto the street and also deters burglars.
Once your garden is made as safe as possible, your child will be able to run free.
​You can rest easy in the knowledge that they cannot escape, while being safe from dangerous power tools. Safety comes first, but this allows them the space to play and develop both mentally and physically.