early childhood play Tag Archives -Together We Play

The 2026 National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA) Annual Conference in Philadelphia brought together thousands of parks and recreation professionals to explore new ideas, connect with industry partners, and celebrate the power of play.

For Landscape Structures, NRPA 2026 was a week full of excitement. We showcased Smart Play® Volo Pico+™, celebrated an award from KABOOM!, and connected with customers and friends at The Franklin Institute.

Throughout the conference, one thing stood out: The parks and recreation community shares our passion for creating spaces that bring people together.

Here’s what we saw, heard and loved.

A packed house at the LSI booth. Thanks to everyone who stopped by to play.

A record crowd with constant energy

More than 8,000 people attended this year’s conference, and our team felt it from the very first morning.

In some years, the booth traffic comes in waves. This year, it felt constant.
Longtime customers stopped by to reconnect with their Landscape Structures consultants. Meanwhile, plenty of first-time visitors discovered our brand and explored our playground, splash play and shade solutions.

The weather helped, too. “It was gorgeous out, and everyone was excited to be there,” said Sandy Swanson, event specialist at Landscape Structures. “The vibe in the conference hall was so positive.”

A booth you had to walk all the way around

Our booth sat in the middle of the exhibit hall, and it was hard to miss. Tall walls with bold messaging framed a bright, colorful Smart Play® Volo Pico+™ playstructure. From the aisle, visitors could only see part of it, making them want to step inside and discover the rest.
Once they did, there was plenty more to explore.

LED walls showcased playgrounds, splash pads and communities from across the country. A color wall highlighted the inspiration behind our nature-based palettes, showcasing shades like Berry, Paprika, Honey and Peacock.

Visitors could ride down a slide built into the bleachers. At the activity counter, they picked up postcards, pins, bags, mini backpack charm bags and chocolates. More than once, we heard that it was the best activity counter at the show.

“It was much more of an experience than a product display,” said Megan Andrada, director of marketing at Landscape Structures.

That matters. “People remember how they feel. They don’t always remember how things look,” Sandy said. Our goal is simple: We want a visit to our booth to feel like a visit to a playground.

Tall curved walls framed the booth and drew visitors in from the aisle.

The activity counter, where visitors picked up postcards, pins, bags and chocolates.

Our color wall shared the nature-based palettes behind our designs.

Volo Pico+ was the ⭐

One of the biggest highlights of NPRA 2026 was the introduction of Volo Pico+ to the parks and recreation community. Designed specifically for children ages 2 to 5, Volo Pico+ made its second major industry appearance just one week after previewing at ASLA.

At NRPA, it quickly became the main topic of conversation in our booth. “There wasn’t a lot of explanation needed,” Megan said. “There was just a lot of positivity”. Visitors loved how easy it is for adults to move through the structure alongside children. The die-cast car track sparked plenty of nostalgia, while others pointed out that there is something to do from every angle, not just a slide at the end. The colors drew attention, too. Again and again, visitors stopped to talk about the palette and how inviting the entire structure felt.

The response reinforced an important idea behind early childhood playground design: Thoughtful details can create more opportunities for children and caregivers to play, connect and explore together.

Volo Pico+ at NRPA 2026, designed for children ages 2 to 5.

Visitors stopped to talk about the palette and the thoughtful details, along with our new PLAY Book.

Easy for adults to move through alongside children.

A Spark Award from KABOOM!

NRPA week brought another exciting moment for Landscape Structures.
During the conference, we were honored to receive a 2026 Spark Award from KABOOM!, an organization dedicated to ensuring all kids have access to the play they need to thrive.
The award was a meaningful reminder of why we do what we do.

While innovative playground equipment and inspiring projects often take center stage at industry events, the conversations throughout the week kept coming back to the same thing: Play is life-changing.

Celebrating with our friends at KABOOM!, who believe every kid deserves access to play.

Conversations that stayed with us

Some of the best moments had nothing to do with products. During booth setup, an NRPA show coordinator stopped by to find Sandy. She pulled out her phone and shared photos of herself and her nephew playing on a Landscape Structures playground in Connecticut.
“We had the most fun,” she said.

Another longtime industry professional stopped by simply to reconnect with the team. He shared stories about knowing Landscape Structures founders Barb and Steve King for decades and spent time catching up with David Smith, senior vice president of sales at Landscape Structures.

Everyone knows how to play, and almost everyone has a playground story.
That’s what makes these conversations so meaningful. Behind every playground project are people, memories and connections that extend far beyond the equipment itself.

A book signing in the booth

The Landscape Structures booth also welcomed Jamie Sabbach, founder and president of 110% Inc. for a book signing.

Jamie is the author of The Bison Principle: Clarity, Discipline, and Courage in Local Government Through the Lens of Parks and Recreation. A well-known voice in the parks and recreation industry, Jamie brought new faces into the booth and sparked meaningful conversations throughout the event.

Landscape Structures has proudly sponsored her Financial Sustainability Certification Program for several years. The book signing offered another opportunity to highlight that partnership and connect with industry professionals who share a passion for strengthening parks and recreation agencies.

Book signing at the LSI booth with Jamie Sabbach (far left) of 110% Inc.

Nothing About Us Without Us

The week’s conversations extended beyond the show floor.

Landscape Structures’ Jill Moore, inclusive play specialist, and Scott Roschi, creative director, led a discussion titled “Nothing About Us Without Us”. Their discussion focused on the importance of involving people with disabilities in the playground design process.

The session explored how designers can learn from lived experiences, gather meaningful feedback and create play environments that serve a wide range of abilities. It’s an approach that reflects our commitment to inclusive play and a belief that everyone deserves opportunities to participate.

The takeaway was clear: The most inclusive playgrounds are created with communities, not just for them.

Scott Roschi and Jill Moore, who led the conversation on inclusive play.

A party in a museum made for curiosity

Our customer celebration took over The Franklin Institute, welcoming more than 2,000 guests for an evening of exploration, conversation and celebration. Food and drinks were spread throughout the museum, giving guests the freedom to wander, reconnect with colleagues and discover exhibits at their own pace.

“Usually a party can be an open bar and some tables,” Sandy said. “This was fun for everyone”. The Benjamin Franklin National Memorial glowed purple in the rotunda. Nearby, a large screen nearby displayed a message we believe deeply: Play is life-changing. Guests collected buttons along the way, and the event t-shirts were a hit.

The museum itself felt like a perfect fit. Many of the exhibits are designed to make big ideas tangible through hands-on experiences and curiosity-driven exploration. That’s the same philosophy behind the playgrounds we create.

The Franklin Institute, lit up for our customer celebration.

The Benjamin Franklin National Memorial glowed purple in the rotunda.

Guests were free to wander, explore and discover exhibits at their own pace.

See you at the next one!

From innovative playground design and inclusive play conversations to reconnecting with industry friends, NRPA 2026 reminded us why this community matters. We left Philadelphia with new connections, renewed friendships and plenty of inspiration for the playgrounds ahead.

Thank you to everyone who stopped by, played, chatted and celebrated with us.
Want to see what everyone was talking about? Explore Smart Play Volo Pico+ and discover new possibilities for early childhood play.

Or find your local Landscape Structures consultant to start planning your next play space.

Scott Roschi, creative director at Landscape Structures, spends his days thinking about how design, play and place come together to create experiences people remember. After attending the 2026 ASLA Conference on Landscape Architecture in Los Angeles, he shares what caught his attention on the expo floor—and what those observations might say about where playground design trends are headed.

I didn’t make it into a single education session at the 2026 ASLA Conference on Landscape Architecture in Los Angeles. I spent the conference on the expo floor, which turned out to be a good place to read where the profession is heading when it comes to playground design trends.

Designing play for more ages

The surprise this year was age range. ASLA has traditionally featured plenty of big play for 5- to 12-year-olds. This year, more manufacturers brought playground equipment designed for children ages 2 to 5, and there was more adult fitness equipment than I remember seeing at past shows. The floor covered more ages at both ends.

By the time Karlye Emerson, president and CEO of Landscape Structures, spoke at the Opening General Session at the end of the first day, I’d been seeing that shift for hours. One line of her remarks named it: “the places we create today will serve communities for years, even generations, to come.”

Serving more ages and serving them together are different design problems. The second one is what we took on with Smart Play® Volo Pico+™, our new playstructure designed specifically for toddlers and preschoolers ages 2 to 5, which we previewed at ASLA.

What parents and kids taught us about early childhood play

Before showcasing Volo Pico+ at ASLA, we put an early prototype in front of real parents and kids and watched where the design got in their way. Then we changed it.

We removed several barrier elements around the perimeter so a parent or caregiver can get to the LSI Flexx® net and steady a child without reaching over anything. We raised the shade so an adult can stand comfortably on the deck. When the same families came back for the second prototype review, they noticed.

So did one landscape architect at our booth.

Before anyone explained anything, he walked the playground structure and started pointing things out: the spots where a parent could step in and help, the net tying the whole structure together, the fact that it has no front or back, and a height that never felt intimidating even up close.

He has designed and specified plenty of playstructures himself, so he knew what he was looking at. As soon as he left, I found Tory Roff, principal designer on Volo Pico+, and told him it was like the landscape architect had been sitting in our design meetings. He’d covered nearly everything we talked through during design and testing, and he got all of it from the structure itself.

That’s what good design should do. You shouldn’t need someone standing beside it explaining why every decision was made.

Designing for generations, not just age groups

The die-cast car track got the biggest reaction of the week. Almost everyone who stopped had a story about the cars they played with as a kid and what it’s like to hand that experience down to their own children.

One dad told me his daughter plays with die-cast cars shaped like animals. She uses them completely differently than he ever did, building a world of her own, and he gets to watch.

That’s the generational play Karlye was talking about, told by the people living it.

The 2027 PLAY Book works on the same principle at project scale. Every project featured in it was created with a specific landscape architecture firm and a specific community, and the book names them. The playground isn’t treated as something dropped into a site. It is part of a larger vision for the place.

Aaron Skogen, general manager at Aquatix®, and Heidi Stengel, sales design manager at Aquatix, made a version of the same case for splash play in their ASLA Learning Lab presentation. Universal design isn’t about designing an experience for one group of people. Done well, it creates environments that work better for everyone who shows up.

What color trends tell us about design

Then there was the pink.

More of the industry is developing its own colors now, and that’s good to see. What caught me was how many site furnishings companies arrived with the same family of pink. It felt out of left field.

Hot pink was everywhere at the World Cup this summer, showing up on boots from nearly every footwear brand and standing in sharp contrast to the green field. That convergence had a reason.

At ASLA, I’m less sure what the reason was.

When a color shows up everywhere at once, I want to know where it started—and whether it started with anyone’s site.

Curiosity as a design method

Later in the week, I spent time at San Diego Design Week, and the thing that connected both events was curiosity.

Every landscape architect and designer I met at either one was doing what I was doing: watching for what’s next and figuring out how to use it on the next project.

That curiosity is also a method.

Volo Pico+ got better because someone watched a parent struggle to reach their child and went back to change the design. That observation became a different barrier, a higher shade and a better experience for the adults and children using the space together.

Playground design trends will change. Colors will change. The equipment on the expo floor will change. But the question worth carrying into the next project is more enduring:

Who gets designed in—and who might we be unintentionally designing out?

Together We Play

Bringing the magic of play to communities.

Tag Archives: early childhood play

Play Takes the Show Floor: Our Week at NRPA 2026 🌳🛝