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Outdoor rooms with not-so-secret gardens

Christopher D. Ritzert's quarter-acre garden behind his 1930s stone Colonial in Washington started out as an unremarkable backyard with a jumble of weeds and neighboring homes in full view.

To fix that, Ritzert worked with a landscape artist to design a series of outdoor rooms that ascend the hill behind the house.

Now after a multiyear makeover, you sense an extraordinary setting even before you get out of the car. Water trickles from three fountains as the car ascends the exposed aggregate driveway, and when your steps crunch the pea gravel you think you're in Provence.

The flagstone terrace behind the house, outside the kitchen door, is defined by a gently curving low stonewall creating a casual dining room.

Up a couple of stone steps is a more intimate dining room with pea gravel and the continuous restful murmur of fountain water. The verdant landscape is lush with shrubs and trees of all sizes in a hundred shades of green, flowers, grasses, fine furniture and whimsical sculptures.

"This is what I call my terrasse a la Provençale," said Ritzert, who is a vice president of TTR Sotheby's International Realty. "The feeling and scale are very different from the flagstone terrace. It's a great place for bird watching during the day and stargazing late at night."

Fresh air and nature are a retreat from the city. We crave and are spiritually refreshed by it. Thoughtfully designing your outdoor landscaping - a garden hideout in the backyard, a cozy deck or a rooftop oasis - can add to your quality of life and the value of your home.

The way to do this "is to create outdoor rooms," said Brendan Doyle, founder of PLANTERRA, a landscape planning and design firm, describing the work he did for Ritzert. "Think about the perimeter of your property as enclosing your entire living space or floor plan, then subdivide it into outdoor living spaces or rooms."

It is not necessary to have a large space to create pleasant outdoor rooms.

"There are only 4 feet from the edge of our patio to the property line," said Doyle of the Washington home he shares with artist Larry Kirkland. "So I appropriated the view beyond my lot instead of screening it out."

He used design elements in the neighboring house - white pickets in the second floor railing - and duplicated them in fencing panels he installed along the property edge and in the garden furniture. "Enclosing the yard with individual fencing panels gives the appearance of room dividers," he said.

He designed his backyard breakfast room by grouping furniture in the spot that is the same distance away from the house as the house is tall. "I use the golden triangle in my designs," Doyle said. "The most comfortable place to sit outdoors is the point where the distance from the back wall of the house to the seating area is the same distance as the house is tall."

The result is a fully realized outdoor room with decorative furniture on a parquet or tapis pierre - stone carpet - of diagonally set Carderock bluestone. "Diagonal, not row-by-row," Doyle said, "because diagonal lines make the space feel bigger."

Amy Suardi, author of the blog FrugalMama.com, organized the front yard of the house in Washington that she and her husband, Enrico, live in with a perspective quite different from the drink-before-dinner setting.

She designed outdoor rooms to feed her family and provide play spaces for her children, Sofia, 13, Virginia, 11, Mark, 7, Luke 4, and Diana, 22 months.

"I planted an edible garden. It's more useful than grass, more friendly, sunnier and it gets the kids and me outside and active together," she said. Peach, cherry, apple, Asian pear and fig trees are flush with fruit. There are tomatoes, sugar snap peas, edible flowers; an herb section; strawberries; and roses.

"We also have purple carrots and chamomile, cantaloupe and honey dew and pumpkin," Mark said. "We eat fried pumpkin flowers. It's what they do in Italy."

Antique red bricks with clinging bits of moss form a path and play area across the garden leading to a hiding spot under the cherry tree. "I like the baby antique chairs under the weeping cherry. It's like a little wonderland," Sofia said.

"What matters, what's really important when working outdoors is to create a sense of quiet, understated drama with a view of beauty," Ritzert said.

Amy Suardi, author of the blog FrugalMama.com, designed outdoor rooms to feed her family and provide play spaces for her children, "I planted an edible garden," says Suardi. Photo by Doug Kapustin
Christopher Ritzert hired a landscape architect to create a terraced backyard with several levels and different "rooms." Washington Post photo by Toni L. Sandys
Eleven-year-old Virginia sits on one of the antique garden chairs beneath a weeping cherry tree as she and her mom, Amy Suardi, play with 2-year-old Diana. Photo by Doug Kapustin for The Washington Post.
"What matters, what's really important when working outdoors is to create a sense of quiet, understated drama with a view of beauty," Ritzert said. Washington Post photo by Toni L. Sandys
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