Sun Valley Community School Natural Playground

Sun Valley, Idaho | Student-Led Design and Year-Round Outdoor Learning

The Vision: Bringing Outdoor Education to the Schoolyard

Nestled in the mountains of central Idaho, Sun Valley Community School has a long tradition of experiential education and outdoor adventure. Students regularly participate in activities such as skiing, hiking, camping, and exploring the surrounding landscape. However, the school’s traditional playground did not reflect the adventurous, hands-on learning that was central to its curriculum.

The school partnered with Learning Landscapes Design to transform its outdoor spaces through natural playground design for schools. The goal was to create a beautiful, cohesive green campus that encouraged exploration, physical challenges, imaginative play, and connection to nature while embracing the surrounding mountain environment.

Student-Led Playground Design

Student involvement was central to the project. Learning Landscapes Design collaborated with school leadership, teachers, parents, and students to establish priorities and create a shared vision for the playground.

LLD led a series of hands-on STEM design sessions through our Design With Students program, introducing students to the landscape architecture process. Students explored their existing playground, gathered site data, surveyed classmates, analyzed site conditions, and developed their own design programs. Working in small groups, they created scaled drawings and presented their ideas for the future playground.

These workshops gave students an opportunity to practice real-world problem-solving, collaboration, and design thinking. LLD incorporated their ideas into the final design, demonstrating how student engagement in playground design can create meaningful ownership of outdoor environments.

Turning Challenging Terrain Into Play Opportunities

One of the site’s defining characteristics was its significant topography. Rather than flattening the landscape, LLD used the existing slopes to create opportunities for adventure and year-round play.

The design incorporates a boulder scramble, a large embankment slide, and a hillside used for sledding during Sun Valley’s snowy winters. A tall log tower, log climbers, stepping logs, overhead ladders, and swings provide additional opportunities for climbing, balancing, and physical challenges.

These natural play features encourage children to assess risk, build confidence, and test their abilities in ways that complement the school’s outdoor education philosophy.

A Student-Designed Space for Social Connection

One of the most distinctive features is a custom hangout deck developed from the students’ design ideas. With partially enclosed slatted walls that provide a sense of privacy without completely separating the space, the deck offers a flexible setting for a wide variety of activities.

Students use the deck to eat lunch, relax with friends, and invent imaginative games, including a favorite called “coyote family.” Its open-ended design allows the children to determine how the space is used, rather than prescribing a single activity.

Throughout the playground, quieter spaces such as reading nooks, fort-building platforms, an amphitheater, a sandbox, and sensory features balance the more adventurous physical play areas. Sports and group games are accommodated through basketball, wall ball, and an open lawn.

A Natural Playground That Reflects the School’s Values

The completed playground offers students opportunities to climb, explore, create, gather, and play throughout the seasons. Natural wood and stone materials connect the design to the surrounding mountain landscape, while flexible spaces support the school’s emphasis on exploration and experiential learning.

More importantly, students see their own ideas reflected in the finished environment. By involving children in the design process and creating spaces that support their real interests, Learning Landscapes Design helped transform a traditional playground into a meaningful extension of the school’s educational program—an approach that also informs our work creating private school green schoolyards and natural playgrounds.

Project Details

Client: Sun Valley Community School

Location: Sun Valley, Idaho

Project Type: Natural Playground and Green Schoolyard Design

Learning Landscapes Design Services:

• School leadership and staff collaboration
• Student STEM design workshops
• Student surveys and community engagement
• Site analysis and playground programming
• Landscape architectural concept design
• Natural playground construction documents, details and specifications
• Construction support, RFI responses, site visits, safety review, punch list