Making the garden a pleasant place to spend time in requires more than happy, healthy plants and a patio. To entice you, your friends and your family to spend time outside, the location needs to tempt you with comfort sufficient to lure you away from indoor activities. That means you need to make your outdoor property as inviting as your indoor property. There are lots of ways to do that, depending on what your lifestyle and sense of design may be.

First of all, you need to make being outdoors convenient and comfortable. The inside of your home usually is. So how do you make the outdoors the same and more?

Being outdoors is healthy for both body and soul. Where there is greenery, the air is cleanest. When you watch birds or insects, your mind relaxes and clears. When you see a seed grow into a plant and flower or fruit, you get a sense of being a part of something important and your critical, judgmental mind has a chance to re-set. Watching children or pets play renews a tickle at being alive. All this good stuff is great for good health and productivity.

So, it really is worth using the space in your garden that you are paying taxes on. You could say you are extending your house by making this space another ‘room’? So long as it becomes an additional living space, it will indeed be an extension of your home and your own ‘outdoor room.’

Since so much of our year is spent with bright, hot sunshine, the best way to tempt people outdoors is to offer the refreshing ambience of water. Of course, the most alluring feature would be the invitation of a well-designed swimming pool. For children, a swimming pool can occupy them for hours at a time. Do not forget the importance of making safety an integral part of the design. So make sure all codes and safety concerns are carefully addressed. With clever design and thought you can make those safety fences into decorative ‘walls’ for your outdoor swimming room. This way you can create an outdoor room that leads to the swimming pool and works as a place to relax between dips or to indulge while watching others frolic in the water. But swimming pools are not the only possibility for a water feature. During cool evenings or when the weather cools down in the winter months, there is nothing more relaxing – or romantic – than a soak in an outdoor hot tub.

With the right design, you can create your own paradise. If that doesn’t fit into your lifestyle, you don’t need to submerse yourself in water to make water work for you. Consider designing a unique water feature solely for the space. The sound of water never ceases to amaze me how it refreshes and calms. Any of these liquid invitations will help entice our indoor weary souls into the outdoor room.

Look at ideas in magazines, on television and on the internet. There are formal rooms in which you can virtually create a living-room space with outdoor furniture. Or you can copy parts. The use of a suspended fire pit not only creates warmth but a visual piece of outdoor moving art offering the opportunity to do a little relaxing, entertaining. An outdoor rug, outdoor rug I hear you say. Yes they are out there and can really make a splash within your outdoor room

Think about how you want of your outdoor room to function. Do you want an elegant living room that just happens to be outdoors – as seen in so many magazines currently? Or perhaps you would prefer to skip all the hoopla and merely create a mini retreat; a place to get away from it all or an outdoor room that functions as a local version of the Nature Channel. Maybe the outdoor room needs to be a great space for a play room adored by the children yet keeping them safely out from underfoot. There are many uses you can employ in your outdoor room. Most likely you will want to get more than one use.

Start with a wish list when designing, whether it is a whole landscape or a detailed part like an outdoor room. Think about where you want all the important items to go. It is this time you need to consider the all important practical issues. Like for instance, do you want the cooking areas close to the kitchen? Is it best having the hot tub in a certain place for privacy, safety, access Have you a view which is untapped and by using it heightens the lounging effect. These logical considerations are all too easily overlooked when you dive straight into building or landscaping. Such mistakes can be seriously regretted later.

When you know how you want to build your outdoor room and you’ve sketched out where all the functional features will go, then you can start shopping for the fun items; the décor. Furniture, pots, curtains or other décor can be as personal as any selections for the interior of your house. The detailed selections can be time consuming or impulsive. You can call in either a good landscape designer or an interior decorator for ideas. Or just wander through catalogues, shops and the internet to find the pieces that resonate to your taste and lifestyle – and budget.

Chris Slaughter

www.scenicbluedesign.com.au