Here in California, where our mild climate permits it, our outdoor living season is not restricted to the few months of summer but may, in some years, extend from the middle of April to the middle of October.
Our patio, as all outdoor living rooms are firmly called in California, whether they are truly patios in the Spanish sense of the word or not, is equipped with a barbecue, dining table, and comfortable chairs for relaxing.
But since I am primarily a gardener interested in plants and their uses, it is not the furnishings or equipment but the plant materials chosen especially for the patio, which are my chief delight.
These are carefully selected to delight, not the sight, which is the sense to which primary appeal is usually made in the plan of a garden, but the smell.
Perfume Garden
About two years ago, I decided to collect a “perfume garden” on the patio so that while (lining or relaxing, we might enjoy the fragrance of plant materials.
In one corner of the patio is planted a Lady Penzance sweetbrier which, particularly when the foliage is damp, scents the air with a fragrance like apples ripening on the tree.
One single plant of white nicotiana perfumes the entire garden after sunset from its place in half shade and mingles with the sweet, sharp scent of marvel-of-Peru not far away.
Mint is tucked into damp shady corners, contributing a cool, lush bit of green and its pleasant scent. In one particularly shady corner, I have planted lilies of the valley this year.
A few evening-scented stocks are placed among other plants in the flower border nearby, where they remain inconspicuous by day but reveal themselves by their nighttime perfume.
Rose, lemon, apricot-scented geraniums, and young lavender and rosemary plants are grown in pots and scattered here and there in the sunnier parts of the patio.
I also grow a few of the more heavily-scented chrysanthemums in pots for the sake of their foliage rather than primarily for their flowers.
I like the pungent scent of the leaves on a warm afternoon, although some people find it unpleasant.
This year dianthus which is being grown from seed in our tiny lath house, is to be added.
The possibilities for further addition seem limited only by the size of one’s garden and budget.
2nd AWARD: Mrs. William R. Parsil
We’ve always been enthusiastic about our brook. In fact, it was because of its clear rippling water that we bought our property.
A sheer delight during the summer, beautifully frozen in winter, our little stream we discovered goes on a rampage each spring and floods over its banks, inundating an area 50′ feet wide on each side.
We hoped to landscape our stream, but they vanished when we saw it in spring action.
We concentrated our efforts for several years on the higher ground about the house, putting in flower beds and a vegetable garden and perfecting a planting of evergreens and flowering shrubs to Screen the house from the road.
But we always wondered what we could ‘do to enhance the area beside the brook.
Everyone gravitated to it, our boys and guests alike. Heavy growth was on either side – unnamed tangles of weird grass and brush.
The area was so refreshing and cool in summer, but it was just not a place to entertain guests. So then we hit on an idea.
Make A Simple Clearing and Grass Panel
Why not make a simple clearing? First, make a grass panel of native grasses for lawn chairs and tables. Then, cut out the dead trees and shrubs.
Cut a path through the undergrowth to that large patch of dogtooth violets to which only the bravest woodsman dare go.
Thin out the forest growth on the opposite side of the brook to increase the vista from our clearing into the deep woodland beyond.
It took days and weeks with a brush hook, gallons of poison ivy killer, and hours of laborious raking and burning, but suddenly the area began to take shape.
It developed in character, character, which was always present but which we could not easily see before.
We discovered a large group of elderberries that was left undisturbed. A young sycamore tree beside the brook was found to have a perfect shape.
We cleared out the growth under it so that it became a feature of the clearing, and we carefully thinned out scrub trees and growth so that a more distant old white-barked sycamore came prominently into sight in the distance.
Ancient Sycamore
We have found pleasure in seeing the large in the small and the young in the old. Who knows, but what that ancient sycamore was the parent of the young one giving shade close at hand?
With respect for nature, we have helped her allow us to see her beauty. As a result, our naturally landscaped clearing has cost us hardly anything but effort.
We have used stones from the brook to construct a simple fireplace in keeping with its surroundings.
Two felled trees make a bridge to connect the banks of the stream. They really belong to the scene. We have come to respect our brook site.
At first, saddened because we could not introduce cultivated species or more interesting native material in this area. Nature has let us see fragile wild geraniums blooming only a few weeks after the ruthless flood waters subside.
The formally cultivated areas around the house are a direct contrast to the wild clearing, but each helps us appreciate the other more.
3rd AWARD: Mildred Miller Snyder
When we moved to this southern city two years ago, we looked at many houses, eliminating them all for one reason or another until we found this one.
It was untenanted and unkept, the grass knee-high, the shrubbery overgrown, the screen doors sagging open, the awnings faded and torn, and water in the basement.
Then we chanced to look out a back window onto a lovely terrace built of old and mellowed brick placed in the center of the yard and built on different levels so that the terrace rose to one side of the yard.
A barbecue was at the far end of a low curving wall that held back the highest ground of the area, over which towered 70-foot pines.
The lowest area sloped away to a drainage ditch. In the hack beyond the terrace was a deep woods.
We bought the property and laid out a garden around the terrace. But, first, a 7-foot high provincial-type cedar fence was installed at the upper side along the property line as a screen and shelter for choice camellias.
A wire fence across the back of the property with a cedar gate does not obstruct the view of the sun and shadow play in the deep woods.
A rose hedge is now planted in front of the ditch to hide it and provide cold all summer. Grass stretches along the sides of the terrace, separated from me by flower beds.
Birds are encouraged to the garden with feeders and a bath. This terrace is now our outdoor living room, an all-year place of contentment.
Spring brings the scent of blossoming trees, sweetshrub, and honeysuckle host of daffodils and Dutch iris nod acquaintance with pansies and foxgloves.
Summer is scented with roses, gardenias, lilies, and tuberoses, with petunias gayly sweeping their salmon skirts across the beds.
In the fall, the massed chrysanthemums catch the eye. Winter brings the beauty of the exotic camellias into prominence.
So in the favored climate of this southern land, we barbecue or catch the sun in our sheltered garden, ever thankful that the terrace was so enchanted for us that we bought the property just for it.
4th AWARD: Gladys Gillies Stern
Walled by tall hemlocks, broadleaved evergreens, trees, and split-sapling fencing, much of our whole garden is the outdoor living room.
It is a beautiful picture in daylight, with an ever-changing parade of color from early spring to killing frost and a fairyland on bright moonlit evenings, but full moonlight at the right time is infrequent.
Through ‘fifteen years of building and tending this garden, my husband and I often worked until dark.
There was seldom enough time to sit, relax and look. So about five years ago, we arranged to “turn on the moonlight.”
Words cannot describe the after-dark enchantment of a softly-lighted garden. All flowers become lovelier, and the lawn is a perfect carpet.
The view from our screened terrace is something “out of this world,” a joy for our guests and us.
There is a right and a wrong way to light a garden. Lights installed merely for a utility or without careful thought are usually wrong for beauty.
Conspicuous fixtures and wires are wrong. Lights that glare into the eyes of neighbors are wrong.
We put a floodlight with a 300-watt bulb and a wide frosted lens in a maple tree that overhangs a corner of the terrace, connecting it with a short length of largely concealed wire to the house.
This was done after experimenting with heights and angles so we had the diffused effect of moonlight on the roses, perennial flowers, much of the lawn, and a lovely old apple tree.
Placed in the apple tree, with equal care and shielding, a smaller light gives unearthly evening beauty to the rockery, pool, and west wall of shrubbery.
Another, concealed behind a rhododendron, spotlights a white iron bench in the terminal nook of the central axis from our wide living-room doors and terrace. The wires to both are in underground lead cables.
The cost of garden lighting is moderate compared with the countless added hours of beauty it provides.
It is the best garden investment we have ever made. It more than doubles the satisfaction that can be had from an outdoor living room.
44659 by Na