By Mike Lanza
I have been planning to remake my front yard into a “front yard family room,” to become a neighborhood hangout – a sort of outdoor suburban version of “Cheers.” Well, we finished it this spring and have been enjoying it all summer, so it’s time I wrote about it, both what we created, and how successful it’s been.
I tried to take a completely fresh perspective on our front yard design. Front yards, by and large, are not designed for people to use. Certainly, they have features like walkways and driveways to move people and cars in and out, but architects and builders hardly ever think about people actually passing time there. When I started to think about what kids and adults could do with our front yard, I quickly realized how much wasted space we have in front yards in America.
This is a shame because, assuming your back yard is fenced in like mine is, your front yard is the only place where you can be right next to your house and socialize with neighbors at the same time.
Front porches used to be this “transitional space” between the private home and the public, but they largely disappeared in the late 20th Century. They’re making a comeback these days, but still, many of the new porches are set back far from the street, so they’re far more private than public.
Besides, even porches right next to the street can’t give kids back their streets, which are much less accommodating to kids’ play than they used to be. My hope is that we might be able to exploit our front yards to give us what both our front porches and our streets used to provide to Americans.
In choosing the features for our front yard, I placed a priority on providing a wide range of activity options both to keep individual people coming back, and also to engage all members of groups who might stop by, from adults to teenagers to tweens to young children to babies. Below is a list of features we’ve installed:
white board: We put outdoor-capable whiteboard material on the existing fence that runs along one of our borders. The entire stretch of white board runs over 30 feet. We also keep a wooden box there with dozens of dry erase pens.
picnic table with storage benches: Our sturdy 8 foot long redwood picnic table lies under a redwood tree about 10 feet from the sidewalk. The picnic benches all have weatherproof storage, meaning that the top surfaces are hinged and can be opened to store things inside. We store things there like disposable plates and cups, books, and board games.
media system: We also store a media system inside one of the benches. This consists of a computer, TV set top box, projector, audio amplifier, and speaker. The projector shines through a piece of plexiglass installed at one end of a bench and is aimed at the white board. I completely control the computer from a couple applications on my iPhone, so I hardly ever have to open this bench. I’ll say a lot more about this media system in a future article.
fountain: The most prominent spot in our front yard, bordered by the sidewalk and our driveway, is occupied by a circular millstone fountain. The fountain is very low profile – about 15 inches off the ground – so it’s very easy for toddlers to play with. They often go wild on it!
concrete driveway: I tore out our driveway’s “pavers” – stones with somewhat convex surfaces laid in a pattern – and laid smooth concrete in its place. Everyone I mentioned this to thought I was crazy because they thought our pavers were much prettier than concrete. Well, I was concerned with our kids being able to do things like scooter, skateboard, play basketball, and draw with sidewalk chalk on our driveway. Kids can do all that and more on concrete, not on pavers.
basketball hoop: These are common, but often not very well used. Ours may get more usage because of all the other stuff we have going on in our front yard to draw kids here and keep them engaged.
sandbox:This is another big draw for toddlers. I’ve placed it right next to our driveway and about 12 feet from the sidewalk, so it’s prominent. I often come home to see a toddler playing there with a parent hanging out close by.
neighborhood mosaic: Kids at Camp Yale, my neighborhood summer camp, made the tiles for the buildings, and a friend who’s a mosaic artist created the overall design and the other stuff. That quote in the white box is a favorite of mine. It’s from a book called “The Big Orange Splot” by Daniel Pinkwater, famous not only for being an author but also for being a humorous commentator on NPR. The quote says, “Our street is us and we are it. Our street is where we like to be and it looks like all our dreams.”
First printed in Playborhood.com
Mike Lanza,a serial entrepreneur with “way too many degrees from Stanford,” has stepped back from the start-up grind to, well, play. Raised in a Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) suburb, Mike reports that he went outside to play everyday and had a boyhood free of play dates and other signs that today’s kids are over-scheduled, over-protected, and under-served when it comes to old-fashioned fun.
Through Playborhood.com, the father of two boys is working to raise awareness about how play has virtually disappeared from the lives of most American kids, and, by building a community of other concerned parents, bring it back.
Read more A great neighborhood life for kids it’s a lot of work and it begins when kids are toddlers
