The room outside

The idea of the garden being an outside room has been around for many years but has perhaps never been as relevant as it is today. The ever-increasing pace of life and growing house prices are just two reasons for making the most of our outdoor space, while new products have broadened the possibilities.

When it comes to integrating your house and garden the first crucial step is realising that a garden need not just be about plants and gardening. Plants may well be the special ingredient, but the principal point is that a garden should be a space designed to be used and enjoyed by people.  

How you choose to use your garden will depend on your lifestyle and your house, but the best way to integrate house and garden is to create strong links between the two, both visual and practical. 

Visually this can be done by continuing a style, or material, from the house into the garden, or by subtly lighting focal points or specimen plants, to bring the garden alive both at night and in winter. Maximising the amount of glazing, and particularly floor to ceiling glazing, will dramatically enhance the connection with your outdoor space, with light flooding in and plants flowing right up to the house.

From a practical point of view, it is about maximising accessibility. Movement needs to flow into the garden with the ease of one room to another and so, for instance, tables and chairs should always be offset away from the paths and doors.

It is worth bearing in mind that our homes are designed with human scale in mind and continuing this relationship into garden, by the use of overhead structure such as canopies or pergolas and dividing structures such as hedges, will create a comfortable transitional space into the garden.