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How to Choose the Right Park Equipment – A Complete Guide

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Are you starting the exciting process of planning a new community park or outdoor recreation space? Whether you’re a planner, purchaser, landscape architect, business owner or organization leader, incorporating a quality multipurpose recreational facility is a productive and positive way to improve the health and vitality of your community.

While many think of parks as pleasant green areas to take their daily walks, socialize or bring the kids to play, their effects on the environment, the community and community members themselves go so much farther than recreation. As complex contributors to aesthetic, recreational and environmental factors in their city or area, public parks:

  • Revitalize the surrounding community by offering multiple uses to stimulate community involvement
  • Aid economic growth by boosting property values and municipal revenue
  • Create safer neighborhoods
  • Encourage mental, physical and social development in children
  • Promote environmental benefits
  • Drive tourism by creating a community destination for people to gather and enjoy the outdoors

By providing a green space that supports trees and wildlife, parks help build a city’s green infrastructure, which promotes cleaner air and better living conditions for everyone nearby — after all, one acre of trees can provide a full oxygen supply for 18 people each day, and even a fraction of that can improve air quality. By offering stress relief, decreasing depression, raising happiness levels and providing engagement opportunities, parks also have a positive impact on mental and physical health for both children and adults.

When you’re planning an outdoor recreation project, you want your park to provide all these perks and more — but what do you need for a community park to ensure its success? It’s all about the park features. From the supplies needed for parks to the different kinds of park areas you can create, here’s everything you need to know about park equipment.

What You Need for a Community Park: Choosing What Park Features You Want

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Before beginning work on your new community park design, it’s important to determine what features you envision for your outdoor space. A simple green area with walking trails is a nice feature for a neighborhood, but if you want your park to draw community and make a difference, offering specific areas with unique features and equipment is key. Here are some park features that will add to your community and help set your park apart:

  • Playground: When you’re aiming to attract children and make your park family-friendly, a playground area is a must-have. It will bring families together, offer a social setting for parents, and help you be an influential part of encouraging the kids in your community to play, learn and grow. When you’re selecting playground structures, you’ll want to make sure you choose safety-certified equipment that offers fun, innovative options for all ages.
  • Picnic Area: If attracting sports groups, social clubs, families and regular visitors is your goal, installing a picnic area is a great way to make your park visitor-friendly and fun. Picnic areas will offer your visitors a space to socialize, stop for lunch, take a break after a workout, or relax and enjoy the natural scenery. Your area will need aesthetically-pleasing, high-quality picnic tables and site amenities.
  • Dog Park: What do people love more than dogs? The opportunity to take them on outings, picnics, to playgrounds and on their own adventures. Installing a dog-friendly area creates a community destination for pet owners and pups.  We can help you choose the best play and agility training equipment tailored specifically to your canine guests!
  • Fitness and Sporting Equipment: In an increasingly inactive world, encouraging physical activity, fitness and recreational sports is important for both kids and adults. To make your park a resource for active healthy lifestyles, think about installing outdoor exercise equipment and sports equipment to make your park a community fitness destination.

What Must Your Park Have For Picnic Areas

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When you plan on making your park a social area open to a variety of activities and people, a picnic area is an easy way to ensure that. It’s a place where families can have lunch on the weekends while they enjoy your other park features, where book clubs and parents’ groups can meet without paying a reservation fee and where sports teams can enjoy a half-time snack or cool-down drink.

To make sure your picnic area is enjoyable, comfortable and attractive for your guests, make sure you have these essential park picnic supplies:

  • Picnic Tables and Eating Area: An eating area is the most important part of your park picnic section. It gives friends and family a place to sit, snack and chat whenever the weather is nice, so you want to make sure it’s well-equipped to keep visitors coming back. The right commercial picnic tables are a key part of your picnic area, and Adventure Playground Systems offers the perfect variety of outdoor tables to suit your style and seating needs. Pick from round, rectangular and square tables, wheelchair-accessible tables and tables with attached seating. The right tables will make your picnic area pop.
  • Benches: Keeping your park equipped with comfortable benches is a good idea both for your picnic area and in other places. They give your guests a comfortable place to sit and read a paper, survey the scenery, stop on their walks or think in peace. Whether you prefer backless benches, standard benches or specialty benches with inscriptions or graphics, we have the styles, colors and varieties to make your park precisely what you imagine.
  • Park Grill: If you want your picnic area to go above and beyond and attract more attention than other parks in your surrounding areas, giving your guests a grilling area is a great way to elevate it even further. Installing a grill in your park offers visitors the opportunity to expand their picnic palate with barbeques, cookouts and summer parties.
  • Waste Receptacles: To keep your park in the best shape possible and encourage guests to keep coming back, you want to make sure it’s clean, well-kept and environmentally friendly, so equipping your picnic area and the rest of your park with ample trash receptacles is important. Keeping your park litter-free makes it more welcoming, family-friendly and offers a clean, safe environment for your community. Available with multiple options for receptacle lids, colors and in-ground mounts or portable bases, our trash and recycling receptacles help you keep your park well-polished.

Will You Have a Park Playground?

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Do you want your park to attract families, school and daycare groups or parent groups with kids of all ages? The best way to make your park family-friendly and appealing to the public is to install a high-quality, engaging and safe playground area where little ones can explore, play, socialize and look forward to visiting.

Playgrounds are more than a place for kids to have fun — they’re a physical, healthy environment where they can learn and grow by developing better brain function and life skills, including social skills, fine motor skills, problem-solving and more. Also, they introduce children to an active lifestyle early, encouraging them to exercise and seek outdoor activities. Here are the essential commercial playground equipment components to make sure your park makes a difference in kids’ lives:

  • Playground Structure: The basis of any positive park playground space is a sturdy, safe commercial playground structure with a variety of components to keep kids of multiple ages engaged. To promote physical, emotional, intellectual, imaginative and social development, Adventure Playground Systems offers a diversity of innovative, high-quality equipment that provides the best in design, engagement and safety from early childhood to adolescence. Choose from our specially-designed playground systems with a variety of colors, designs and equipment options for children ages 2 to 12.
  • Swing Set: Everyone remembers the early days of begging their parents to push them on the swings. There was nothing like that feeling of flying as you pumped your legs, gripped the chains and felt yourself momentarily lift off the seat as you soared higher and higher. Swings are something every kid enjoys — from preschoolers to middle schoolers and beyond. Plus, they offer crucial child development in mental and motor skills. Elevate your play space with this versatile, fun addition for families when you choose from our variety of swing sets with custom seating and color options to suit your playground vision.
  • Merry-Go-Round: Ideal for engagement, exercise and fun whether kids are playing independently or in a group, merry-go-rounds and other spinning play equipment offers stimulation and easy excitement for children of all ages. This fun playground addition helps children develop skills like balance, spatial 0020.awareness, coordination and motor skills. Choose from a unique selection of merry-go-rounds and spinning equipment from one of the only merry-go-round manufacturers in the U.S.
  • Climbing Structure: Challenge kids to reach further, climb higher, build their muscles and build their skills with fun climbing structures like ladder climbers, climbing walls, geo domes and so much more! These fun independent play additions give kids the chance to build their strength and agility while engaging in an exciting challenge. Adventure Playground Systems offers a unique variety of high-quality standalone play climbers for children from ages two to 12.
  • Safety Surfacing: When you have your park playground space equipped with all the right play structures and park amenities, it’s essential to make sure you don’t miss out on the most important aspect of keeping your playground safe and compliant. ASTM surfacing standards require that all commercial playground equipment have an impact attenuating protective surfacing under and around it. Safety Surfacing in outdoor play areas provide kids with a sturdy material to run and play on while reducing the risk of fall related injuries should they stumble. Surfacing foundations help with the visual aesthetic of your outdoor recreation space and can increase the overall play value of a playground by adding a fun visually interactive element to the area! To match your playground vision and make your play area more secure, we offer safety surfacing options like engineered wood fiber, rubber mulch, synthetic grass and so much more. One of our Adventure Play Experts can assist with finding the right surfacing option for your park today!

Will Your Park Have an Outdoor Gym?

In today’s busy world, exercise can be hard for people to squeeze into their busy schedules, and gym memberships can be difficult to afford or keep up with. When you want your park to encourage healthy living and physical activity in your community, give your visitors an alternative option for exercise by installing outdoor fitness equipment. Enhancing your park with outdoor gym equipment allows you to offer a designated area where people can get in some strength training while soaking up some fresh air and sunshine, as well — what better way to work up a sweat?

Your community enhancing outdoor fitness area will keep guests motivated and encourage them to continue coming back. Promote healthy living with these essential park gym features:

  • Pull-Up Bars: Give your guests a great way to challenge their arm muscles and build their strength with our triple pull-up bar station. It’s simple but essential and doesn’t take up too much space — plus, it offers three options for pull-up heights and room for three people to exercise at once.
  • Push-Up Station: Keep your visitors pumped with our push-up station, which promotes flexibility, balance and core strength while building muscle.
  • Parallel Bar Station: Our parallel bars are useful for both kids and adults and support a variety of exercise activities, including dips, knee raises, arm swings and more.
  • Dual Leg Press: Our exciting dual leg press lets partners exercise together while taking in the outdoor scenery of your park.
  • Chest Press: Versatile and wheelchair-accessible, our comfortable chest press station lets any adult work on their strength.
  • All-in-One Fitness Kits: Save time and money by installing one of our outdoor fitness packages, which offer an already-configured fitness system complete with a variety of equipment.

Will Your Park Have a Dog Park?

Did you know that in 2013, more than 56 million households owned dogs? Years later, that number is only increasing, so when you’re building a family-friendly environment like a park, why neglect one of the most important members of the family? As man’s best friend, dogs need a place to run and play, too. When people come to exercise, explore or enjoy your park, they want to be able to give their beloved pups space to enjoy the outdoors, as well.

Allowing dogs in your park or facility is excellent, but installing a dog park area with specific equipment for our four legged friends is even better. Dog owners can connect and socialize while their pups play. Here are some fantastic dog park features and amenities you can add to your park:

  • Water Fountains: Dogs can get thirsty and have to stay hydrated during all that exercising, so make sure your park is outfitted with some pup-friendly water fountains to refresh them! At Adventure Playground Systems, we offer one-dog fountains, as well as fountains for both dogs and their humans.
  • Hoops: Help your human visitors train their dogs by offering hoop course options, which includes adjustable options for dog trainers and amateurs alike.
  • Climbers: Our dog climbers will give pups of all sizes a challenge and a fun way to explore their surroundings — they’re even complete with a paw protective coating to make it easier on the dogs’ feet and give them a secure grip. Dogs and owners alike will love this feature.
  • Hurdle Features: For training, exercising or playing, our dog hurdles offer a canine fitness feature with a fun, cute design and adjustable heights.
  • Tunnels: Install one of our cute dog crawl tunnels to give your canine visitors a fun new space to explore, hide and play while they enjoy your park. They’re fun for big and small dogs alike!
  • Trash: With all those pups running around and having fun, you want to make sure your dog park space is poop-free. Don’t forget to install some well-placed trash receptacles to help owners remember to clean up.
  • All-in-One Component Kits: When you’re looking for dog park packages with everything included or specific equipment for dog training or certain dog sizes, our dog course kits offer a variety of options and let you purchase all the equipment you need at once.

Will Your Park Have Sports Equipment?

In addition to your playground and outdoor fitness areas, offering sports fields and park sports equipment is an integrative way to promote outdoor fitness and attract visitors of all ages. With fields, courts and equipment, you’ll draw adults and kids, school teams, neighborhood teens and recreational players to your park. With good enough equipment, maybe you’ll even make your park the site for sports tournaments or regular community games! Here are some must-haves for park sports equipment:

  • Baseball Fields: Bring Tee-ball players to teen athletes to your park by offering a well-equipped baseball area. Make sure to keep your baseball diamond well-groomed, and don’t forget your backstop. Installing dugouts is also a good idea when you want to encourage community or school leagues to play in your park. With parents, kids and friends practicing their swings, playing catch and coming out to support each other during games, your park will be the perfect place for making baseball memories.
  • Basketball Courts: A paved basketball court is another awesome addition to your community park area. It will give kids a place to practice for school or community leagues, give adults and teens a place to blow off steam and get together with friends, and let community members engage in full games if they want to move past shooting and dribbling drills. Choose a sturdy pair of basketball nets and backboards to make your court long-lasting and welcoming.
  • Soccer Fields: Keep kids and teens up to speed on their soccer skills by giving them a place to play and practice all year. Support community leagues, school teams and casual players alike by installing a soccer field area complete with goals and nets. Think about installing bleachers to encourage more visitors and team games! Kids and adults will love your sporting areas.

Adventure Playground Systems Can Help Bring Your Park To Life – See How

When you’re looking for a commercial park and playground equipment to make your community, school or business stand out and attract visitors, Adventure Playground Systems is here to offer innovative, engaging outdoor recreation solutions and client support specialists to give the experiences you aim for. Focusing on park and playground design, installation and manufacturing, we specialize in unique commercial park equipment that’s exciting, user-friendly and backed by high-quality warranties. Our excellent selection of innovative outdoor recreation products covers everything from picnic tables and commercial play equipment to outdoor fitness courses, sports equipment and site amenities.

Here at Adventure Playground Systems, we’re more than an equipment distributor. With unmatched experience and expertise in our field, our team can offer turnkey services for your next outdoor recreation project. Our Adventure Play Experts design, manufacture and install our products based on our customers’ needs. With the addition of our playground installation services, we can handle everything from your initial consultation and playground design to permitting, manufacturing and turnkey installation. Plus, all our project installations are expertly inspected for safety compliance and durability by one of our in-house, certified playground safety inspectors. So rest assured your commercial play equipment is certified by state and federal standards and finished with a quality safety surfacing solution.

Providing exceptional outdoor recreation equipment and adventurous experiences to Texas and beyond, Adventure Playground Systems is here to make your next park project a hit in your community. Explore all the outdoor recreation solutions we have to offer and start selecting the perfect play equipment for your park online today.

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