The View from Inside
We water and landscape professionals literally shape the outdoor environments in which we work – cutting grades, building walls, planting trees, installing pools, ponds and fountains and preparing patios, decks, planting beds and lighting systems.
In designing these outdoor-living spaces, we spend the bulk of our time outside: walking the site, shooting grades, considering focal points and effectively visualizing the experience for our clients. If all goes well in installation, the upshot of this activity is that these homeowners will spend a considerable amount of time outside because we’ve succeeded in transforming their backyards into functional extensions of their homes.
Where I work in New York, of course, it gets sublimely cold in winter and nobody’s much interested in going outside for any reason from December through March – but even here the interplay of interior and exterior is something we work with in every project. In my case, however, perhaps because I recognize that the season in which my clients are able to enjoy their exterior spaces is relatively short, I tend to spend quite a bit of time on the inside of the home in order to help my clients get the most of their outside experiences.
In my last column, I began what will be a series of discussions about designing gardens for human use. In that context, it’s not much of a stretch to say that most of the humans we work for will use the gardens we design largely by looking at them from inside their homes. And that’s true no matter where on the map we might work, no matter how fleeting the seasons might be: This is why I say it’s never a bad idea to start the exterior design process by stepping inside.
FOR THE PEOPLE
I’ve always operated with a sense of this inside/outside balance in my head. Indeed, this is why I ask all of my clients to be ready to invite me into their homes so, among other things, I can visit each room that overlooks the space where I’ll be working and look out the windows and doors to see what’s to be seen from inside out.
Is there a view directly through the neighbor’s bathroom window from this window or door? Is there too much sun exposure through this one big door? Would I be blocking out too much sun or losing too much of the view were I to build a pergola in this location? Once you start thinking in these terms, the questions to be asked and concepts to be considered flow endlessly.
And this is true no matter where you live and work: Regardless of climate, our clients have lives, careers and obligations, and as wonderful as it would be for them to sit in a garden all day, swimming or reading or sipping a crisp Riesling, the cold fact is that most days they get up, take showers, make coffee, eat breakfast and head for their cars to get to work.
At the end of the day, the process reverses – and in far too many cases, these folks never get outside to see or experience the garden. If they see it at all, in fact, they do so from inside the house as they move from room to room and wait for the daily cycle to repeat itself. (It’s sort of depressing when you stop and think about it.)
In a nutshell, however, this cycle and the breaking of it is precisely why I think it’s so important for us to begin shaping our exterior ideas from an interior perspective. This is why I spend so much time in the house, looking out and designing spaces in my head as I pass from room to room and think of ways to draw my clients’ attention (and maybe even their physical frames) out into the open air.
As I see it, the best way to coax them outside and invite them into their gardens to enjoy the fragrances, feel the breezes, listen to the waterfalls and add simple pleasures to their daily grinds is to make my garden spaces seductive: I want them to have the sense that in going outside, they will be warmly embraced in ways that will make the stresses of everyday life go away.
If I succeed in this, I have done my job – no matter what region I’m in or what design style I might be using.
INTO THE AIR
To get this process started, I let my clients know that I’m a realist: I know for a fact, I tell them, that even though I am there to design outdoor spaces for them and earn my living doing so, I accept the fact that they will spend a majority of their time inside the house.
This in no way implies that I’m trying to talk them out of having me redevelop their outside spaces; instead, I want them to wrap their brains around the concept that they will usually experience these spaces from the inside of their houses and that, as a consequence, we must consider them from many separate perspectives.
In doing so, I know that a big part of what I’m doing is trying to overcome their end-of-day inertia and the powerful urge they might have to flop on the couch indoors to watch television. I know the odds are stacked against me when I consider tired people at the end of long workdays, but flattening those odds is the challenge I face in getting them to choose my gardens over the local news or American Idol.
So how do we win? In most cases, we can do it by getting our clients and their guests to think about the garden before they manage to reach the front door. This is why, in our projects, we invariably install some sort of gate, arbor, stone threshold or other visual device to draw attention to the backyard from wherever the cars are parked.
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A Fine Romance Let me confess here to being an unabashed romantic who loves the thought of the spaces I create being enjoyed by couples walking hand in hand, speaking softly, taking in all the fragrances and observing the fish, plants, fountains or waterfalls together. As I see it, there’s no more endorphin-producing a feeling than romanticism, so why not use it to draw clients out into the garden? With that in mind, one of my favorite details is what I call the Romeo-and-Juliet terrace. More and more of our clients are building homes with first-floor master suites, which I see as the perfect opportunity to create a terrace accessible only from that special room. The result doesn’t have to be terribly elaborate – perhaps a small deck or stone terrace surrounded by walls or plantings, maybe with a spa off to the side: Although it may stand in plain view from the rest of the yard, it is off limits to the casual guest. The fact that it’s not accessible by stairs or pathways tells those visitors that this is a private space for the homeowners’ exclusive use. It’s their place to sit in bathrobes sipping coffee, enjoying a candlelit dinner or just reading the newspaper. More important, it’s another way to get them outside into the fresh air! — B.Z. |
What I want is for everyone to notice the gate as they move along the driveway. Maybe it’s slightly ajar, beckoning them to explore where it leads – a subtle (yet powerful) detail that tells these people this is the way, this is where I should be going. If the draw is attractive enough, they’ll follow along.
We do this again once they’ve passed inside, and with the same sorts of simple details. Perhaps it’s the small deck terrace just outside the back door – the place where the grill is just out of sight but is still readily accessible even in winter, or where the comfy chair awaits with the side table close at hand to hold a glass of wine and a small plate of cheese, or where the afternoon light is particularly favorable when the desire to read the newspaper is part of their routine.
It’s all a matter of thinking things through from this inside-out perspective, and it fascinates me how many designers and installers fail to take this step. In fact, I can’t count all the times I’ve entered beautiful new sunrooms or remodeled homes with acres of glass overlooking drab patios with silly sets of stairs dropping off into the abyss.
In fairness, many of these sins are committed by general contractors who focus on the house itself and put in the steps and patio in a rush to obtain a certificate of occupancy. Still I’m left to wonder: How difficult it would be to include a small, tasteful terrace as parts of these packages?
But I guess I shouldn’t complain to bitterly or be too ungrateful, as straightening out these tangled situations is one of the things that keeps my business going!
COMFORT IN MOTION
This brings me to a key point in designing across the inside/outside interface: What do you do to ease the transition from indoors to out when the general contractor leaves you with an eleven-inch deep stair tread (or two or three or even four) when you know you’re asking your client to feel comfortable walking from the kitchen to the deck carrying plates of steaks and shish-ka-bobs to the grill?
I start with my clients by reenacting a Jerry Lewis-style pratfall (which always seems to give those of a certain generation a kick): It will only take a single near miss or an outright fall to dissuade them from ever using that door or grill space again!
I want to make these physical transitions both inviting and easy. On warm summer nights, for example, I want them to leave the doors wide open and treat the simple terrace as an extension of the home. This is a way of life in warmer climates and in Japan, for example, where homes are built around garden spaces and entire walls open up to the outdoors.
When I design and install these terraces, I build them with no more than single steps down from the house at no less than five inches or more than seven inches below the interior floor. (In milder climates, of course, building terraces on the same level of the home is an even better arrangement; where I live, however, we need to consider snow build-up along the house and avoid any water intrusion that might result from snow melting up against the house.)
This single-step approach is ideal where I am, allowing for a casual, safe and elegant transition to the outside while inviting my clients and their guests out to use the grill or just sit and stare at the garden, listen to the waterfall, look at the fish or watch the kids play in the pool or spa.
To reward them for stepping outside, I deepen the experience by including small, trickling waterfeatures (bubbling urns, weeping rocks or traditional Asian details such as Tsukubais). At the very least, this will encourage them to open the windows to allow the sounds to come in to their homes: Even if they don’t go out, in other words, they’re experiencing their exterior spaces and we’re effectively bringing the outside in to them.
ILLUMINATING THOUGHTS
Lighting is another key consideration in bridging the interior/exterior gap, because as we all should know by now, a properly lighted landscape is powerfully attractive. This is why, when I first meet with clients and walk into their backyards, one of the first things I do is to look for the typical 500-watt spotlight hanging over the back door and tell them point blank that this will be the first thing to go.
The blinding halogen glare might be acceptable if the patio space is commonly used as a stage, but by and large nobody is comfortable sitting on a deck where sunglasses are mandatory after dark. Instead, I paint a verbal picture of subtle, mesmerizing, even romantic lighting as a means of creating interest and drawing people outside to experience warm summer evenings, listen to the crickets and watch the moon go by.
While lighting is usually the first item cut from a budget when a budget must be cut, I always, always manage to keep it in to some extent. As I explain to my clients, it seems shortsighted to spend good money beautifying a property only to have it disappear once the sun goes down.
My point in all of this is that there’s a real need on the part of designers and installers to make certain our clients – the human users of our designed spaces – have every opportunity to enjoy the gardens and watershapes we provide for them. In other words, why build them if our clients won’t use them?
As I see it – and this may be an understanding most easily arrived at if you work in a place where the warm seasons are all too short – I want my clients and their guests to experience my garden designs all year long. If the main reason I do what I do is to give people the opportunity to set aside stress and enjoy life more fully, what better way is there to do so than by establishing unbreakable links from inside to outside?
Bruce Zaretsky is president of Zaretsky and Associates, a landscape design/construction/ consultation company in Rochester, N.Y. Nationally recognized for creative and inspiring residential landscapes, he also works with healthcare facilities, nursing homes and local municipalities in conceiving and installing healing and meditation gardens. You can reach him at [email protected].