Tree Story

My relationship with trees started from my childhood days when I used to spend the entire vacation in my grandmother’s garden. As a little girl, I loved to play alone, immersed in dreamland, in cool tree shades against the bright summer sun.  My best friend was a “chikoo“ tree (Manilkara zapota), an evergreen tree with a textured bark, dark green leaves and soft brown fruit that is especially loved by crows! I used to whisper my secrets to the tree, hug the tree bark when I was sad and kiss the leaves when I was happy! Little did I know of the therapeutic benefits of this exercise back then!

I remember a game called “Tree to Tree” that I used to play, back in the day, with my sisters and a group of neighboring friends. This game can be played around minimum three trees. The number of players needs to be one more than the number of trees. Each player must hold onto one tree and then keep exchanging trees with the other players from time to time. While the players continue to exchange trees, the extra player must grab a tree. The player left without a tree becomes the “denner”. This is just one of the countless games that we played with and around trees.

An urban life, as a working mother, allows me less chances to get carried away in this childhood connection. I miss having a huge tree in the garden, its branches spreading to the first-floor balcony, offering me natural hiding places for mysterious conversations and wild encounters with birds, cats and butterflies.

Somewhere, the mother in me wants my boys to experience similar natural wonders. And hence, as a landscape architect, all these years while designing playgrounds I kept exploring what the best urban play element can be.

Recently, I attended a landscape and playscapes summit that discussed about the design of play spaces and how, in these times, we often tend to overthink a playground in terms of safety and regulations.

As children, we learnt to climb trees, often fell off trees and scraped our knees. The tree branches became a swing and the tree trunk, a climbing bar! Trees taught us many important lessons of life…and that’s exactly what a play element is supposed to do! And thus, I got my answer!

A tree is the best play element for any playground! --- in any part of the world, for a wide range of age groups, providing shade and play value at the same time. Whether it is hanging, climbing, balance, movement, swinging or imaginative play, a tree becomes a combination of various play elements in one and can holistically contribute to the overall development of a child from early years.

Let us bring more trees back to the playgrounds. Let their branches weave through many a childhood story…