In the playground of the Sprig Ludens nursery, a little girl tests her waterproofs to the limit as the rain falls and she jumps in a giant muddy puddle. Another toddler has a look of fierce concentration on his face as he walks across a plank balanced across two tyres; his little pal climbs a nearby tree.
Filled with a chorus of play and birdsong, Sprigs – as it’s known to its small clients and their grownups – is an incongruous wild island surrounded by a concrete sea of tightly packed terrace houses and busy artery roads in Streatham, south London. “They do camp fires,” says parent Dani Powell. “I love it when my son comes home smelling of smoke.”
