Outward Bound: How to define your outdoor rooms

By Hosea Omole

The idea of dividing your yard into different outdoor rooms and furnishing them to facilitate sitting, resting playing and even cooking may sound a little farfetched at first. For many of us, landscapes are all about cosmetic lawns and flowers. But anyone who has experienced the concept of outdoor living will tell you to forget the closure of the indoors; there is something so refreshing about being out in the open.

Whether all you have is a balcony or a more elaborate garden space, outdoor living concepts can be adapted to suit you. Ideas vary from a simple arrangement of garden furniture to fully functional outdoor rooms detailed with sophisticated furniture, appliances and decor to feel as inviting and as cosy as any indoor room.

The options are numerous: If you like to sit and dine outdoors with family and friends, then a well furnished deck or patio would be the option. If sport is your thing, consider a tennis or basketball court at the centre of your design. Closer home, swimming pools provide perfect entertainment, relaxation as well as exercising options. This versatility makes them a favourite for use as outdoor living centrepieces. Here are some ideas to help you set up outdoor rooms.

Plan The Rooms

Think of your garden as comprising different rooms just like the interior. The only difference is that instead of masonry walls, floors and ceilings, outdoor rooms are defined by landscape elements. Hedges, flower gardens, earth mounds and garden structures make up the walls. Lawns and pavements are the outdoor floors while tree canopies, pergola roofs and the sky make up the garden’s ceilings.

The greatest challenge when creating outdoor rooms is how to divide and define the different functional spaces within the same landscape. Having separate outdoor living spaces allows you to create different mini-landscape designs for each of them. Not that you shouldn’t strive for unity across your landscape design, it is just that the more successful you are in physically separating one outdoor living space from another, the more flexibility and diversity you will have. That way you do not end up with conflicting functions.

According To Functions

The first step is to identify the different rooms and name them. List the functions you want to accommodate in your garden and analyse them in terms of noise level, level of privacy and nature of activity involved. You will notice that some functions complement each other while others don’t. Try to locate the quiet, private and passive functions away from the noisy and active spaces.

Next, you build the walls. Hedges form the most common form of walls in the garden.

They can be used to form different degrees of enclosure by varying their heights and densities. Being natural, they are beautiful and you can play with numerous colours and textures.

Garden Structures

You may also mould and shape your grounds to define different outdoor rooms. A sudden change in level between adjacent grounds effectively divides the space into two. Similarly, an earth mound cutting across a space creates two rooms. Earth mounds are very effective but they take up a lot of space and are, therefore, not recommended for small gardens.

Garden structures and furniture may also be arranged to act as walls between different outdoor rooms.

Pergolas, arbours and gazebos can be incorporated to create semi-enclosed outdoor rooms. Trellises, decks and railings can also be constructed in a space to divide it up and create rooms. Should structures appear too intrusive (and they often do), soften them by training climbers to grow on them.