Published by Programme B
At this year’s recent Canada Blooms exhibition in Toronto, visitors could view examples of spectacular outdoor living spaces, fusing traditional planting and gardening with modern features and furniture. They included dining areas where you can eat and unwind with the family, enhancing your meals with summer salads grown in your edible garden, and seating zones, where you can sit back and relax in the shade on a sunny summer’s day.
A Shady Place to Sit
Creating an outdoor room in your garden is simple and will encourage you to spend more time outside, enjoying your garden. Comfortable, weatherproof seating is essential and motorized retractable awnings shade your patio from the hot sun, while at the same time defining the space. Adding the option of looking out over a small pond or relaxing water feature can enhance the area further. By creating an oasis of calm in this way, you can enjoy long relaxing days outside, mimicking the feeling of being on vacation.
Outdoor Eating
As well as simply sitting outside, another trend from Canada Blooms was to create elaborate dining areas with home bars and imposing stone-clad fireplaces. To create your own cozy dining room is simpler. Pick the right size table for your space so that it doesn’t feel cramped, and add soft solar lighting or lanterns so that you can enjoy the space late into the evening. As the night cools, a wood burning fire pit or sleek, ethanol fireplace will encourage you to stay out later, enjoying the evening air.
Planting Hanging Gardens
For greenery in your garden, and to soften the outline of a shed or outbuilding, the latest trend from the Vancouver Home and Garden Show is to look upwards to raised, angled rooftop gardens planted with low maintenance succulents. Oversized hanging baskets, large enough for several plants, can create a contained space for your vegetables and salads. Or, you could embrace the trend for including more native plants in your garden, creating habitats and providing food for beneficial pollinators.
By adding features and furniture to your garden, you can create a more usable outdoor space, encouraging you to spend more time outside. Once you have finished planting your hanging baskets and rooftops with vegetables and native plants, you can relax undercover, and enjoy your garden throughout the day and in the evening.
Photo by shahbaz Akram from Pexels