Play Trails

I offer bespoke play trails for gardens, museums, galleries and public spaces. Tailored to the space and it’s clientele; I create engaging and playful installations that create opportunities for connection, laughter and curiosity.

Buzzy Bee Play Trail at Trebah Gardens

This trail was specifically designed for families to explore together, with the brief that it needed to be self led, withstand the elements and encourage a lot of laughter and engagement.

For the first week of the residency I spent a lot of time at Trebah Gardens, chatting to people, sketching and brainstorming ideas.

Whilst drawing, I witnessed countless honey bees collecting the nectar and pollen from the flowers. So it didn’t take long to make them my main focus for the trail. This idea developed and I soon decided that the children would not only learn about the honey bees but actually become honey bees!

So I developed a ‘Bee Transformation Station’ which signalled the start of the trail. Children would arrive, collect their worksheet and then transform into bees with the aim to collect the pollen from the flowers which were dotted around the garden.

Inspired by Dartmoor’s ‘Letterboxing’ phenomenon, I created a series of stamps which represented the pollen. These stamps were then placed in boxes around the garden along side a hand painted image of a flower.

The boxes were numbered so the families and children could easily match up the stamps to the missing pieces of the puzzle.

There were also bonus bees hidden around the garden, with golden boxes and special stamps for the worksheet.

I added facts about honey bees and activities for children to do to the lids of the boxes. Keeping the children nice and occupied with extra challenges.

Once all the stamps had been found the children received a bag of honeycomb to take home and enjoy.

The trail was a great success, with families returning to do it more than once. Over the course of the 6 weeks, just under 1,500 children participated.

If you’d like me to design a trail especially for your organisation or outdoor space please do get in touch.