This is my kind of thread! Thank you for starting it. I love our outdoor spaces - and in fact both my dissertations were related to residential outdoor spaces and indoor/outdoor living!
We have a patio and a deck and both get good usage from late fall till about now. The mosquitoes will be here in force by next month and then we won’t be able to use the spaces much.
I have my herbs in planters on my deck and my flowers on the patio. A comfortable place to sit to watch the plants around me and I’m set.
I’m a bit frustrated about the sprucing up of the patio currently because of the SIP shopping restrictions. I just planted a climbing rose that I want to train on/over a trellis that will partially give us privacy from the street.
Oh well, the rose has a couple of years before it will be growing riotously and I hope the restrictions and the reason for them to be long gone by then.
My dream project is to have a conservatory built into the back of the house where I can indulge in my dreams of gardening big without worrying about snakes (phobia - from having too many close encounters in my childhood). I have the plans in my head… if only DH would agree. A girl can dream, right?
The other piece of furniture I adore on our deck is the cushy chaise lounge. It’s metal and every other year I carefully select a new cushion for it. It’s my favorite after dinner, just before dark spot to read.
On our “playground” I mentioned above my daughter keeps telling me to replace the kid swings with a porch swing. It would look nice and be a good use of that structure but it’s the closest spot to our neighbors and I don’t know how much we would chose to sit on it.
Our back yard is the love of my life! It’s like a resort - large free form pool with waterfall and hot tub, fire pit, outdoor kitchen with large grill and refrigerator (all outdated but who cares), upper deck with dining table and gazebo, palm trees around the pool, a flourishing rose garden, many tropical flowers including Birds of Paradise, bougainvillea, hibiscus, and more. (Also three lemon trees and a fig tree, and the Valencia orange tree I planted two years ago and has two oranges almost ready for harvest.)
The house came with a wicker loveseat, two oversize easy chairs, and a coffee table. It also included two lounge chairs and three plastic Adirondack chairs. I got new cushions for the deck chairs the first year in a lovely blue/green tropical print, and later got new cushions for the loveseat and easy chairs in a blue/green underwater print. Because beige and yellow decor just wasn’t doing it for me! The furniture has some wicker starting to unravel but it’s all so comfortable that we see no need to replace it.
We also have our old white plastic round table and chairs that we keep at poolside, and we can stick our beach umbrella through the hole in the table if we need shade.
We had the deck and railings repainted in a light blue grey when we moved in, and have gotten lots of new pots for our plants. Now that it’s stopped raining for the most part, I am completely happy staying at home. The back yard doubles our living space and I’m waiting until it stays warm long enough to make it economically logical to heat our pool. The pool is 40’ at its longest so is great for doing laps. And since apparently the chlorine in the water kills coronavirus, I guess we could invite a friend over to swim separately - let them in the side gate and maintain social distance. The UV rays should take care of any virus that ends up clinging to furniture etc.
I liked our old backyard in Illinois for the trees (including a magnolia) and all the great flowers and vegetable we could grow, but I could barely step outside without getting bitten to death by mosquitoes so didn’t venture much off the back deck in summer.
My outdoor spaces are exactly what I always wanted, in my empty nesting dream home in the rural south.
Our house is 19th c. The upstairs covered porch has vintage white wicker furniture. It is completely private. Our nearest neighbors are miles away. Because it’s so high up, no mosquitoes. We sit up there with our coffee in the morning and watch the sun rise. We have drinks at sunset. Sunsets are glorious. The fire flies come out and sparkle all the way up to where the stars are coming out and sparkling down. Full moons are amazing. You can see a whole lot of the night sky when there are no lights within sight except those you turn on yourself.
We designed a brick patio (reclaimed antique brick) in the back, that overlooks the white rose garden. We have antique white iron patio sets and planter boxes. It’s a white garden. My husband is the gardener and we always have lots blooming in the boxes. Already tulips and something else I can’t remember. Lots of roses are blooming. All are old roses and smell divine. We have meals out there frequently when weather permits.
And … we have a seating area in the woods, overlooking a spring that comes out of the ground there and then flows over mossy rocks for a quite a ways till it hits a creek. There is a woodland path and bridge. Owls come to bathe and hunt in the pool.
In these SIP times, I do feel guilty to have so very much, but appreciate it every single day.
My front foundation gardens are white gardens, as is one of my gardens that borders my neighbors yard. That one is all peonies, Hardy Hibiscus and Shasta daisies. I absolutely love white gardens.
The white gardens sound so pretty! We have jasmine and gardenias that blossom late spring/early summer, but our roses are coral and we have a lot of lavender and purple sage and various grasses.
My shelter in place project was rehabbing an old stone water fountain in our backyard. I love the sound of burbling water.
We are having our covered front entrance torn off and replaced by a big front porch with a hip roof to match the house. It’s going to be so nice to sit outside when it rains. I have to look into porch furnishings although my husband says he wants it to feature a broken refrigerator, a falling apart couch and a bicycle with a flat tire. Maybe a bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling.
@katliamom I have both degrees but don’t (can’t) call myself either because I haven’t gone through the licensure procedure here to work either as an architect or landscape architect. Now I just dabble at design with home projects or small projects for friends.
My dream is to build a second floor sleeping porch off our master bedroom. The sun porch is right below so it would be possible. There is a house in our neighbor that has one that I lust after every time I walk by.
I’m looking to add some outdoor water jar feature, but I don’t think I want resin and I’d rather it were solar powered. It seems like everything I like needs a plug.
How wonderful to have been trained in these fields. The more I look at great outdoor spaces, the more I see a marriage of architecture + landscape design. They have to go hand in hand: the hardscape enhances the plantings, and vice versa.
On Monday I met with a landscape architect. Prior to this epidemic, I had my gardener dig up most of the plants in the front yard. Way more $$$ than I expected.
I also need to add a fence in rear or side of my house, so my puppy has some place to run.
@momofsenior1 agree. Since we figure we are going to be home for periods of time we were thinking of putting a 20X30 foot basketball court in our backyard for the kids with an inground hoop. We have a flat space and we were just thinking about going for it with a layer of compacted crushed stone and those interlocking tiles. It is not a cheap project but we have an Engineer in the family and one in college that is being held hostage lol. Figured we could hire outside help but this may be a hair brained idea : ) Wondering if anyone else has done this?
@momofsenior1 our home was built in 1925. One of our bedrooms was designed to liken a sleeping porch. Side by side windows on two walls of the room. It’s my office (and an extra bedroom)now! I also love all the light!
Task this weekend will be to put together the Costco adirondack chairs that arrived yesterday. Good sale if anyone is looking for new chairs.
