Pattern 2: Garden Rooms

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Garden rooms create intimacy and comfort in being outdoors. Although some garden rooms are clearly separate spaces delineated by solid walls, others are created with mere suggestions of division. Counterintuitively, when garden space is divided up into rooms, even the smallest property seems larger, as you're drawn from one "doorway" to the next to see what each space contains. A garden room can be anything from a little fence corralling a sea of colorful perennials, to a dining pavilion, to a courtyard linking wings of a house. It can be formed by a pergola overhead, by paving underfoot, by plants that grow up to create a screen, by serious walls, or by a partial gesture of a fence.

A series of outdoor rooms are formed completely with plants in this rural garden; the curved forms of low boxwood hedging and the rhythmic line of perfectly pruned trees set against a curtain-like hedge define the spaces.

Copyright ©2007 Timber Press, Inc. Text excerpts from A Pattern Garden copyright © Valerie Easton. Photographs copyright © Jacqueline Koch, except photos on Bridges, Gates, and Shelters pages copyright © Allan Mandell; and photo on Water page copyright © Richard Hartlage. All rights reserved. Posted with permission of the publisher.