Your Back Garden, A Kids Paradise
If you're kids are active then its pretty natural to feel anxious letting them out on their own with the chance of getting into trouble or get themselves hurt, the answer to these troubles is to give them something that will make them want to stay at home and bring their friends too.
If you live in some country mansion you might have the room and patience for a bunch of screaming kids running around but otherwise you will probably want them outside, the obvious place. Your back garden is a secure playground for kids where you can keep an eye on what they get up to, call them back in for supper and make the rules.
In order for your kids to choose your garden as their place to be, it will need to entertain their short attention plans. There are many ways of doing this both on a budget and by splashing out.
Trampolines are cheap and readily available, in the last five years almost every household has ended up with one and it can provide hours of fun. It is great for exercise and gets rid of all that excess energy kids have and can improve their mobility and flexibility for other sports. It does however come at a price, they are fairly dangerous and, left unsupervised, kids can easily get injured by falling off. You can get around this by either buying a safety net but if you don't want one of these looming over your garden you could always dig a hole and bury the trampoline at ground level.
One of the best things for a child is a swimming pool; they can never have enough fun in a pool. They can be garnished with slides, zip lines and an array of floating toys to keep them occupied. But if you live outside the USA this is usually a very expensive option. You could, however, build a free-standing pool that is above ground; these are much less expensive but usually have the same running costs. If you do buy a pool be aware of the dangers it can entail, unsupervised kids will undoubtedly get themselves into trouble.
A relatively inexpensive addition to any garden is a tree house; it can be a wizard's castle or a space shuttle depending on the imagination of the day. Children will spend every waking hour (and some sleeping ones) in these things so if you are going to make one, make it right, follow instructions and buy good materials. Make it very difficult to fall out of and consider building a slide as an exit to avoid children falling off ladders.
You can usually entertain kids with an array of outdoor playground equipment and a selection of playground design graphics like they'd find at school.
