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Consider this your backward backyard Garden Design Mini Course. Free.
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Site first your table/chairs/umbrella & brick pad, similar to, below. Siting near house, sited near a door of the home. Ease of use. Rectangular or square tables are best, they have multiple uses beyond dining, and for dining, can be placed end-to-end for larger groups.
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Choose table/chairs/umbrella hardy to life, and aesthetics to your interior. Aesthetics includes style & color. Little funding? No excuse. To me. At a minimum copy Martha Washington's strategy at Mount Vernon. It was expected she would host/entertain whoever showed up at her doorstep. Many did. Martha Washington used saw horses with planks atop, and a tablecloth. Done. More than economical, functional, pretty, easy to set up, easy to remove.
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If you are field gathering table/chairs for your backyard, aka thrifting, garage sales, curbside garbage collection days, & online no worries about their scavenged appearance. None.
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Choose your exterior color trinity, Green-Brown-White, is the historic exterior color trinity, and paint/stain table/chairs, all, one of the colors from your trinity. Poof, scavenged becomes curated.
Pic, above, here.
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Once your table/chairs/umbrella/pad are in place, at least a year, you're ready to think about phase 2.
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Phase 2 considers shapes, not plants.
Pic, above, here.
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Perhaps, above, a hedge of evergreens and an allee of trees for shade? Scaled to your site/needs. Considerations are mature tree height, speed of growth, how you will prune your trees (pleached/natural/etc.), how tall do you need your hedge, how many openings do you need in your hedge, and etc.
Pic, above, here.
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Maybe you don't want a rectangle of hardscape for your table/chairs/umbrella. All gravel, above, hardscape connected to other backyard hardscape, below.
Pic, above, here.
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Plants in containers, below, create super fast plant scale. Add drip irrigation to your pots, easy caretaking. Skip planters with drama, go classic with evergreen button tops, below.
Pic, above, here.
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All gravel, below, for your backyard table/chairs/umbrella and allee of trees with square green boxes at base. Scaled appropriately for your site.
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Lighting. If you have spotlights, put them on dimmer switches, first making sure light bulbs used can be used with dimmer switches. Strands of LED lights needed.
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Pic, above, here.
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If you've been in your home awhile and still don't have a pretty & functional backyard, no excuses now. None.
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Almost off topic, plants. Consider only plants that are drought tolerant, deer proof, disease/insect resistant, and speed of growth for ease of maintenance. Consider your age, and the size of plants you purchase.
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Hope you already have meal ideas swirling in mind for serving al fresco. And the fun of assembling plates/glasses/silver/napkins/candles...
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Garden & Be Well, XO T
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Backyard is public-speak for the garden behind your home. A sacred space. If it's not, to you, why not? If you've read this far, it's obviously in your heart to 'do' something to make it so. Life is short, daylight's burning.
GOD how I LOVE this blog!!! Thank you!!!
ReplyDeleteThis is another post I'll print out for my Tara basket by my reading chair. I was smiling big as I read it because I realized that this post is kind of a sum up of many posts over the years I've read here about this process and I think I've actually seen it happen in my own backyard/sacred space, all from reading your posts the last few years. Now I know that if you saw it in person there would be ways we went astray but I think you'd smile anyway.
ReplyDeleteLast June I sat in the backyard with my dogs, on grass, trying to figure out how we could make a terrace for me to sit on under the trees, at minimal cost. The area is fenced in with chain link and is perfect for our pets and won't be replaced in our lifetime. RH had already started a small butterfly garden running along one side of the fence.
This winter a new customer of ours wanted all the recently installed concrete roof tiles removed from his large house that a previous company had done and replace it with steel metal shingles, and he wanted us to dispose of them too. Truck load after truck load they came home with RH and with our sons to their houses because they were beautiful brown tiles with graduating colors. And this spring RH built a small shade terrace for me with a batch of them, laying them in sand. He's also laid out another one extending from it into sunny area but is waiting for cooler temps to tile it. My color trinity already was brown, green and white after I realized from your posts that it pleased me more than any other. And after seeing your green chairs around the table I knew I wanted to do that with our very old metal table and four chairs. I chose greens in the green apple family and it was such a happy choice. We will be on the lookout for other thrifted chairs and a table for the other section when it's finished.
My large window over the kitchen sink looks right over this area and we get joy from it every time we look out on it. I must tell you about a focal point we put between the window and the terrace. It is where pipes stuck up from the old well of this 1935 cottage and we wanted to cover that area. We'd had an old large cupola sitting in the driveway for a year, with weather vane, waiting for the right project and RH built a pretty base for it, covering the well pipes, and the cupola on top. Then in what is supposed to be a Maltese cross around the cupola, he made rock edged beds where we've planted perennials and a small Japanese maple. The rest of the area is now brown pea gravel with stepping stones of TN craborchard stone. And then behind the shady table area he planted two white hydrangeas in front of the fencing, hoping to keep adding more each year.
With 2.4 acres here, after RH planting 8 trees out front and a front porch that gets too much of the setting sun, I begged him to focus instead on this small area in the back now, because that's where we sit and watch the dogs play and watch wildlife on the pond. It's where I have pots of herbs and peppers to tend and it's where our adult children want to take their morning coffee and their glass of wine in the evening when they visit.
And someday when the larger terrace is finished, if we haven't found a table, we'll put up the sawhorses and planks. Have you ever seen the movie All That Heaven Allows with Rock Hudson as a nurseryman/gardener who falls in love with Jane Wyman, a wealthy widow? And he takes her to meet his friends who put up the very same sawhorse table covered with a tablecloth and invite friends to a lobster boil? It is one of the happiest impromptu dinners I've ever seen in a movie. The scene was not in the book but this is one case where the movie was better.
Tara, thank you so much for post after post of inspiration and fine writing. When I walk around my new garden I realize that I have your walls and roof and floor and sound and a place to binge on my theme. And that it can keep on developing each year, changes being made as we can.