Home Outside -- That's Where I Want to Be
Written: Nov 05 '09 (Updated Nov 05 '09)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Something for everyone regardless of skill or budget, author's strategy for organizing space
Cons: This could inspire new landscaping dreams and foster winter-related impatience
The Bottom Line: My book is covered with sticky tabs to guide my return to the feasts provided in this landscaping resource--I recommend this to anyone dreaming of an innovative backyard retreat.
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| pestyside's Full Review: Julie Moir Messervy - Home Outside Creating the La... |
While decorating inside my house has become intuitive, especially since the foundation has been established, it may surprise those who know me that the outside is less intuitive even after several decades of gardening and re-landscaping multiple yards. The opening thoughts of Julie Moir Messervy in Home Outside Creating the Landscape You Love rang true with this veteran gardener.
"In many ways, our home outside is just as important to our sense of home as the inside is. Yet most of us feel less confident about creating outdoor living spaces than we do about our interiors." Ms. Messervy, author/lecturer and distinguished landscape and garden designer, understands. Her approach resonates with my personal evolution even though I'm not quite brave enough to complete the garden of my dreams.
I wasn't overly impressed with Outside the Not So Big House in which she partnered with Sarah Susanka author of Not So Big House. In Outside the Not So Big House she gave us a vocabulary and some terrific examples. These inspirations probably didn't appeal to most of us-they were a tad out of the average homeowner's reach and while the concepts could apply, I was disillusioned when trying to connect the comparisons. That's not true with Home Outside. This earns a solid five stars.
Perhaps she was influenced by Richard Louv (author of Last Child in the Woods) and the movement to get children and families back outdoors. "My goal with this book is to get people back outside onto their land by helping them realize the pleasure that's involved in being out of door. I want to revive the home landscape as a place of importance in people's lives." She can help you make your small yard look larger by hiding the fence behind plants and creating outside rooms; large open impersonal grassy yards become inviting and mysterious refuges for every family member. Her strategies help convert typical American yards into pleasant spaces for everyone in your family.
I tend to be overly critical of landscaping books. They frequently boast elaborate landscapes and neglect the rest of us with modest homes and ambitious dreams. While I don't mind drooling over expansive landscapes with expensive features the adult says it's only fantasy and advises me to read with caution. She offers this book to those with the finances to manage expansive landscapes but also those of us with limited finances and space. Home Outside overflows with information for experienced landscapers and gardeners as well as those beginning on their first yard--regardless of the size or condition.
It's in the Basics
Are you beginning and is this your first project? She reviews the basics of studying the lay of the land and assessing spatial requirements. She walks readers through getting started, identifying soil types, checking sun patterns, moving plants around, and working with shoestring budgets. She recommends delineating areas with a hose or water soluble paint before digging. This has page-after-page suggestions for beginners, while the real nuts and bolts of actually installing something like steps or patios will have to come from another resource. You'll learn about your yard's comfort zones and your landscaping personality (she has a quiz). Photographs will help you identify your aesthetic preferences (I'm formal, contemplative, representational, intimate, curved and filled up--you'll need to read this book to better understand me).
An idea is salvation by imagination (Frank Lloyd Wright)
Big Moves, her third chapter, provides organizing strategies to pull our ideas together. This includes the basic layout, aesthetic arrangements, and themes. Her focus is on open-air rooms. She fertilizes imaginations with lots of before and after ideas and photographs. Rather than presenting a hodgepodge of spaces she demonstrates, using examples, how others have unified them using game plans and connecting outdoor hallways.
Messervy has a talent for creating special small spaces outdoors and connecting your outdoors and indoors. In this book she works with small cottage houses, old colonials, and elaborate spaces. Photographs of crowded townhomes and houses on small urban lots proves that lush, secluded (and intimate) landscapes are attainable. In the chapter Comfort Zones she reminds us that our property greets us at the end of a long day, it offers seclusion and escape on Saturdays, and provides a space for our children to pretend. "It's not just your house that provides a sense of security from the world outside its walls, but it's also the landscape around it that offers reassurance and brings sense of peace into your life."
Begin with this book and the zone approach
The Surrounding Zone, Welcoming Zone, Neighboring Zone and Living Zone when combined form our Comfort Zone. She considers pets and their needs as much as children's needs in her discussions. This book is easily half pictures (delicious and practical landscaping pictures--358 photos and 72 drawings) and half text; it's 220 pages long and it's definitely worth reading if you want to refresh your stale perspective or stalled landscape.
Julie Moir Messervy guides readers through the process of transforming our landscapes, homes, and hopefully lifestyles using seven principles. She invites us to return outdoors and to the comfort of outdoor rooms. She supports her concepts with standard landscaping and architecture principles. She combines her philosophy with practical procedures and tips. She helps us articulate our goals but doesn't necessarily tempt with ideas that are unattainable. She offers solutions for developing your landscape in phases. This includes seven chapters based on the seven principles as well as an introduction and afterword:
~ Pleasure Ground
~ Lay of the Land
~ Big Moves
~ Finding Your Comfort Zone
~ Making It Flow
~ Placing the Pieces
~ Sensory Pleasures
A concluding afterword examines a modest property "that shows how all the concepts can work together. It will serve both as an example of one person's journey through the design process and as a summary of the entire book." In this example we see how the owner, a landscape architect, actually took a 1930's summer cottage in New Jersey and transformed it into a home some referred to as a "Hansel and Gretel Cottage or a Shire cottage from Lord of the Rings."
Do you have a new house and a sterile yard, is this your planning time of year; does your yard fail to engage you or your family, do you want to get everyone back outside? Are you just bored of your outdoor space? If you answer yes to any of this, consider Home Outside a resource for pulling the pieces of your dreams together. I just finished devouring this visual feast (word for word) after initially skimming it with little expectation of sustenance--I'll be returning for snacks and some dessert over the next few weeks. (Fortunately this is a low calorie book.)
Recommended:
Yes
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