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White Hutchinson Leisure & Learning Group, Kansas City, MO, USA

Nature in Play Takes Gardening to a New Level

If you're looking for a natural alternative to traditional playground, check out Ohio-based GroExx. The company's unique landscaping systems called GroSoxx offer endless design possibilities when vegetated with plants native to your area - and puts nature right under a child's nose!

With the growing concern over the lack of contact our children have with the natural world, a company called GroExx, headquartered in Grafton, OH, has developed a system that takes gardening with kids to a whole new level. GroExx, www.groexx.com (www.groexx.com/ ) , supports the movement to reconnect children and nature and feels the Institute on Creating Sustainable Environments was the perfect place to unveil the company's natural alternative to traditional playgrounds.

GroExx makes natural play elements and children's play gardens out of compost with a unique product called GroSoxx. It is a tubular containment system filled with locally produced compost and then placed around play equipment and over hard surfaces. The GroSoxx are then vegetated with a variety of hardy, beautiful, aromatic and nontoxic plants. Plants are chosen in part for their abilities to handle abuse from children at play. But more importantly, the plants are selected because they offer a sensory experience children will remember perhaps well into adulthood. The design possibilities are endless with GroSoxx.

Attendees at the Sustainable Environment conference had an opportunity to see first hand how easy it is to garden with this unique product. But the real proof comes when kids get their hands on the material.

Children need to have places where they are free to explore, and educators need spaces that are safe for children. Play spaces designed with GroSoxx not only bring plants directly into a child's environment, they have passed ASTM 1292-Head Impact Testing, which indicates the surface is cushiony enough to support a child falling from a height of at least 8 feet.

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