Privacy and Livability
The Essentials of the Outdoor Living Room
The two essentials of an outdoor living room are privacy and livability. In fact, planning the outdoor living room can be an exciting and relatively easy experience. It opens a new world of enjoyment in which wonders and miracles are performed right before our eyes. There is nothing quite so fascinating as working with growing things. One forms a cooperative partnership with Nature and experiences what a willing, cheerful partner Nature really can become.
It is Nature that helps us achieve the first and most important of these essentials of the outdoor living room -- privacy. Living walls of greenery shut out unsightly views and surround our outdoor activities with a protective screen. Trees provide comforting shade. Soft, springy sod affords a carpet of green underneath our feet. Flowers and berries introduce color, fragrance, and decoration, establishing a delightful, cheerful atmosphere.
Selecting and arranging growing things can be truly interesting. And yet to achieve the second essential, livability, one must do more than just set out plants. Plants are only one element of the picture. To make the garden room livable, one must give thought to its design with the ultimate goal in mind of providing features of interest which are necessary for comfort and relaxation and which establish an inviting, homelike atmosphere.
Most important still is the necessity of satisfying the concepts of good taste in achieving these first essentials. It is from this angle that this series of articles presents each successive step in making plans for your outdoor living room. In the development of the outdoor garden room, the many practical phases in each step cannot be ignored if real success is to be attained.