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Gardens can serve all purposes, from being a beautiful place to grow home vegetables, to a place your children run off all their energies after school, to a place you invite guests around to relax and enjoy a bottle of wine with.
That said, gardens aren’t necessarily social by their very nature. They require upkeep to remain comfortable, as even with just a blanket you need well-laid and maintained turf to enjoy your picnic on.
For this reason, transforming your garden space into a more social setting is not just an effort in implementing the best National Outdoor Furniture, or buying the most expensive grill, there’s more to this process even those can be wonderful starting steps.
In other words, designing the overall aesthetic, utility, and comfort of the garden is more than whatever amenities you have installed. With that in mind, let’s turn our eye to design, and consider how to turn our garden into a more social setting.
Cultivate “Staging Areas”
Instead of thinking about one place where you sit down and talk to your guests, it can be nice to think of “staging areas” across the garden. So for instance, you may place a garden swing alongside your treeline, or a nice couple of deck chairs in a good area for sunbathing, or a more formal seated area with table for eating meals outside. You can also segment space for outdoor hot tubs or pools if you can justify it, again orienting your social space. That gives you more freedom to work with what your garden has to offer.
Open The Divide Between Inside & Outside
A great way to add a social perspective to your garden is to include those inside the house. This might mean implementing larger French doors that can open wide in summer, implementing a conservatory that can add that visual sense of connection, or even putting a deck in place that can serve as a middle ground between the garden and home. This way, walking out into the garden with a pitcher of cool drinks, walking inside if the weather turns, or simply feeling as though you have access to a cooler environment in the middle of summer is easier, pleasant, and easier to navigate.
Keep Privacy Where You Can
When you think about it, privacy is very important for socialization, because if you don’t feel as though you have your own space to relax and unwind, you’ll be on guard. Additionally, you won’t be able to relax and laugh without annoying someone, especially late at night. This is why implementing a treeline or privacy fencing to block views can be ideal, as can playing music from inside rather than outside, making use of the advice above, to prevent the sound from traveling and causing distress. Moreover, this way you can let your children run around and feel safe without issue.
With this advice, you’re sure to transform your garden into a more social setting for everyone you hope to invite into your home, or during those peaceful afternoons with your children.