When designing outdoor living spaces for my clients I try to make sure these areas are not only functional but attractive as well. Often the areas we inhabit outdoors can be easily viewed from indoors so it’s important to get the aesthetics right as well as creating usable space.
For this particular client the whole backyard is the focal point of the house. When you walk in the front door you immediately look out on the entire backyard through glass doors and floor to ceiling windows. It was important to have an attractive outdoor living/play area as well as one that fit the needs of the whole family.
We started with creating a crushed granite patio space that also offered some built-in seating. The house sits midway down a long slope so it was fairly easy to dig into the hill to create a retaining wall on the back side and would then fade into a border. The wall serves to create the patio space as well as offering a place to either sit or hold drinks or for kids act as a small climbing wall. This space is big enough to accommodate outdoor furniture as well as a movable fire pit for cold weather.
Further up the hill the play area was created in the same way. We used the same large chopped limestone dry stack blocks to construct a small retaining wall that ended in just a border. We back filled both areas with limestone road base that was easy to level and compact. For the play area we then used mulch on top of the road base since it provides a softer landing for playing and climbing.
When viewed from the house these two areas complement each other well and add an element of clean lines and visual continuity.
Call NativeScapes Landscaping today and let us help you create your own beautiful yet functional outdoor living space! 830-608-0204