An Outdoor-Living Garden

Some gardens are better treated as one large room than as a lawn with a few features dropped into it. This one turns on a single mature tree, and everything else was set out to sit comfortably around it.

There is a bar to cook and pour at under the oak gazebo, a covered spa a few steps away on the deck, and a cedar-roofed pod to sit in once the evening cools. Riven sandstone paths link them, and willow hurdles screen each part without closing it off.

The spa sits on a raised deck of grey composite boards with a black border and a sandstone edge, set into the lawn, with the boards stepping up on one side to meet it. Dark willow hurdles in new timber frames screen it from the rest of the garden without shutting out the light.

Laid out this way, the garden gives a family somewhere to eat, bathe and gather without going back indoors. It is used through the year, not only in the two warm months.