A Room with a View

Do you ever look out over your garden and think it is all just too overwhelming?  There is just so much green, grassy areas that it seems impossible to tackle and rather dull to view.  Is the idea of developing a flower bed or two awe-inspiring because you just don’t know how one area will relate to the other parts of the yard?  How can you make your entire garden feel whole and yet not just a blank slate of flat grass?  Creating an outdoor room may be the solution to these quandaries.  

The concept of rooms in the garden is nothing new, but how to best create such a space can be a bit baffling.  With the price of housing rising and the lot sizes increasingly shrinking backyards and gardens are becoming premium living spaces.  While you may be thinking that sectioning off the outdoors is counterintuitive with curving flower beds and water features this will only make the space seem smaller, that is a misnomer, it in fact will make the yard appear larger.  Why, because you cannot make out the whole yard from one spot. 

Where to begin; think of your families needs first, do you dine outdoors, is your nose buried in a book many afternoons, is taking a nap on the hammock your idea of bliss, are you a master of the grill?  Today there is something for everyone, you can suspend a bed from a tree with linens draped around it as an outdoor bedroom, and you can buy an entire kitchen outfit with a cutting area, a refrigerator, and the works.  Whatever you can imagine for an outdoor room can be achieved.  Some can be grand rooms and some more intimate.  The thing to remember with garden rooms is that just like indoor rooms the basic elements are the same; walls, floors, ceilings, exits & entrances and focal points.

The Elements:

Walls:  You can achieve a sense of enclosure with many materials such as hedges, walls, fences, a sloping area can be a wall, garden tents which are semi-permanent structures sold in most big hardware and box stores, tall plants like bee balm and ornamental grasses, using a raised bed as a wall, trellises and a bevy of other options. 

Floors:  The floor can set the tone for any given room.  For instance, grass tends to be a more playful room for the kids or pets and games like croquet and volleyball, bricks, stone, pine needles, gravel, concrete patio, they even make plastic rugs now that resemble  Persian rugs for the outdoors, irregular flagstone with moss might be a nice meditation area. 

Ceilings:  The ceiling in your outdoor room may be the sky, a vine-covered pergola, a shade tree of grand proportion or possibly mosquito netting. 

Entry & Exits:  Just as the foyer of your home sets a tone for what is inside so does a gardens entry.  It should be welcoming, maybe mysterious, or encompassing like an archway flanked with sweet smelling roses, a simple gate, or possibly a bridge.

Accessories:  You can never underestimate the importance of making a garden space a personal place; this is best achieved with the use of accessories.  A sculpture, fountain, bench, fireplace, interesting pots, mirrors, what about an old window suspended to a tree or on the side of the house, re-modeled sheds, old fencing, bed frames, outdoor speakers for music, heaters, pillows- really just about anything that is indoors can come out.

Shining Example

Carol and Dan Abrahamson have created an outdoor oasis that is a fine example of how to best fashion outdoor rooms.  Both have a great eye for deals and a lust to seek them out; this is evident in the floors of the various garden rooms the Abrahamson’s have.  Brick is the floor choice in this outdoor haven, is everywhere it is never straight constantly curving and the catalyst of their ability to section and develop various spaces for different needs. 

The Abrahamson’s have a large brick patio (most of the bricks say something like “Buffalo Block” or “Lawrence Kansas” highlighting their knack for salvaging) on the patio is a stone eating table with benches for dining.  Move up a whimsical brick path to come to the garden room for sunning and reading, there two Adirondack chairs here perched above the yard lending to a magnificent view of the entire garden.  Meander further down a winding brick path to a secluded stone bench, cross a wooden bridge over the massive water garden and you are transported into the room with an ice cream parlor table the walls are large rocks teetering on their sides like a mini Stonehenge, and not to be overlooked is the room for the garbage cans, potting accessories and yard tools. 

The Abrahamson’s have added a plethora of “touches”.  There is an entire wall devoted to a sun sculpture collection, metal suns, wooden suns, colorfully painted suns, stone suns.  There are sculptures of herons wading in the pond, playful mosaic tiles and a litany of other accessories. 

It is clearly a labor of love; each brick has been laid by Dan’s hands.  Carol states, “Dan is very handy, so he did all of the work himself.  I help while the work is in process.  One of us has an idea…it germinates…we collect natural materials that are cheap…we finally get started…and the project evolves as we build it.  There are rarely any printed plans.  Usually visualizing something in your head and adapting to problems as you go along works. Actually, we both think that visitors like our projects because they are not like anything you have ever seen before.”

Carol thinks the best part of garden rooms is, “They give us a place to sit back and enjoy the fruits of our labors.  Because our water gardens are the focus of our yard, we also enjoy the sights and sounds of flowing water and croaking frogs.  There’s always a place to escape the blazing summer suns. Our miniature schnauzer of one year certainly enjoys every part of the yard and zips across the stepping stones with much aplomb.  His body functions don’t do much for the grass, however.”  Where Pepper the Schnauzer may leave his mark it only adds to the homey feel of this outdoor “house”.

An ideal way to keep some unity among the various rooms is through color, material and curving beds.  Whether you have a deck, rooftop garden, a courtyard or a patio, make it comfortable with a few unexpected indoor luxuries, invite friends and family over and enjoy this additional room of your house.