Why We Chose Wood Chips for Our Backyard Playground

When we were putting together our DIY backyard playground, we were in the midst of a whole bunch of house projects. We were on a fairly tight budget and just wanted something safe for our toddlers that we could also mow around easily. We ended up going with wood chips and were able to make the entire play area for about $50 – small playground included (blog post about that project down below). Two years later, it’s still holding up well, and we haven’t experienced any of the issues that commonly come up with other types of mulch. Here are some of the other popular mulch options you might be looking into, and why we chose wood chips for our backyard playground.

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Playground Mulch Options – Why We Chose Wood Chips

The main reason that people add some kind of mulch around playground equipment is to make it a safe environment for kids. It creates a softer play surface to protect children from injuries as a result of the impact of a fall.

Other benefits of having mulch in playground areas are that it prohibits weed growth, makes the space look neater, and makes mowing easier. We found that using wood chips was also a very cost-effective solution that solved all of our problems and didn’t have the risks that many of the other options have. It was a win-win. But it’s not the only choice.

For backyard playgrounds, here are some of the other choices you’ll encounter. 

Rubber mulch

Rubber mulch is made from old tires, so some people really like this option from a sustainability standpoint. The other benefits of rubber mulch are that it’s durable (it doesn’t break down easily) and it’s bouncy, so it’s great for protecting children from falls.

Unfortunately, not only is the cost of rubber mulch high, but it’s not an organic material and it’s now being found that there are numerous health risks associated with rubber mulch, possibly including reproductive problems and precancerous lesions. It’s definitely one of the most hazardous substances in terms of playground mulches.

In addition, rubber playground surffaces can be highly flammable.

Fortunately, for both backyard swing set setups and commercial playgrounds, there are much better options than rubber playground surfacing. 

Wood chips don’t have any of these downsides – they’re inexpensive, organic (non-hazardous), and aren’t a fire hazard.

Sand

In terms of loose-fill materials, sand is another decent option for playground use. It provides a soft surface for hard landings, and it’s fairly inexpensive.

The downsides of sand are that it can get very warm on hot summer days, it needs a lot of maintenance, and if you have critters around – like cats – it will probably get used as a giant litter box.

Grass

Grass is certainly one of the simplest options for ground covering for children’s playgrounds. If your top priority is keeping expenses low for your backyard playground, and you already have grass, this is definitely a low-cost option. Grass is also a cool surface that won’t heat up on extra warm summer days.

The main reason we chose to cover our grass with wood chips was because it requires way more regular maintenance to have to mow and weed whip around a swing set every week of the summer. Although installing wood chips for our outdoor play area took a few hours initially, the maintenance needs are incredibly low on a weekly (and even yearly) basis.

The other downside of grass is that it doesn’t provide much impact absorption from falls. 

Pea gravel

Pea gravel is small stones that are roughly the size of peas. They’re a good choice for preventing weeds and water buildup.  One common problem with pea gravel is that with kids and pets, they tend to get scattered all over the yard. In addition, it can be quite slippery for active kids.

Wood playground mulch

Wood playground mulch (also called playground wood chips) is different from regular wood landscape mulch in that it doesn’t include any tree bark, which can eliminate kids getting splinters. Certified playground mulch is overall a more clean wood compared to landscape mulch, so you also won’t find things like sticks, leaves, or branches in this type of mulch.

Overall, it’s one of the better options overall when it comes to choosing a playground surface. And from our local landscape supplier, it was only a little bit more expensive than regular wood chips ($29 per yard for playground mulch versus $23 per yard for wood chips).

Wood chips

We found that wood chips were the best choice for our family’s playground area for a few reasons.

• First, they were incredibly inexpensive. Although wood chips are $23 per yard at our local landscape company, we were able to get an entire truckload of mulch from our city – and many cities offer this option. Just call your city’s Department of Public Works to see if they sell their excess wood chips from jobs around town. (We talked more about this in our blog post, “How to Make an Outdoor Play Area for Kids“.)
• We’ve never had a problem with splinters or injuries from falls… and our kids are not shy about taking their chances on the swing set. Although there are foreign objects like bark mulch and some small twigs and sticks in the wood chips, they’ve never caused us splinters or any other issues.
• They adequately prevent weeds. We laid landscape fabric under our mulch and then spread it about 3″ deep on top. In hindsight, this was probably not really an appropriate depth. Most swing set companies recommend 9″ or more. Although we had occasional weeds in the first year or two, it mostly kept the weeds at bay for a couple of years. If you want less maintenance, you will need to add more mulch every couple of years depending on your area. 
• No harmful substances. Wood chips are an organic mulch, so unlike rubber playground surfaces, you don’t have to worry about your kids playing on toxic substances.

Playground Mulch Vs. Landscape Mulch Vs. Wood Chips – 

Can You Use Regular Mulch for a Playground?

Finding the right playground mulch can be confusing. Can you use regular wood mulch, or does it have to be playground mulch? What about wood chips? 

In our experience, they’re all fair options. Playground mulch is probably the most professional and the best material for safety, since it doesn’t have bark mulch and sticks in it. It can also be a bit more expensive.

Standard mulch – or landscaping mulch – is another fair option, although it contains more foreign materials. (Consider avoiding the dyed mulches, though.)

Wood chips are just shredded pieces of wood. This is what we chose for our playground, and it was super affordable. There are concerns about wood chips and standard mulch giving splinters, but we’ve never gotten any splinters from ours. (And our babies crawl on them!)

All of them require proper maintenance in order to stay an adequate depth and provide weed control. But the maintenance is really quite low compared to many of the other options.