[ HOME BUILDING TREND ]
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Designers change yards
into outdoor living spaces
More homeowners add a natural touch
to where they relax and entertain guests
The latest trend in home decor has evolved from bringing the outdoors inside to taking the indoors outside.
According to national house and garden magazines and news features, homeowners are interested in more than just setting up a barbecue pit and a picnic table in the back yard. Virtual living rooms are being transported into what used to be called the back yard.
Instead of just having a patio off the house with an old daybed and rusting hibachi, homeowners are creating "destinations" like gazebos or courtyards that put them further out in the garden to sit, read or entertain, according to Greg Boyer, a landscape contractor of high-end properties in Hawaii for 30 years.
"The object is to get out of the house and into the garden," he said.
Boyer said he thinks the trend caught on about five years ago when magazines like Architectural Digest featured the exotic, tropical Bali custom of having outdoor rooms, or people actually went to Bali and saw villas or cottages with private pools and other amenities, Boyer said.
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Boyer said he has lately put in a half-dozen swimming pools with chaise lounges built right into the shallow end of a pool that's only a foot deep -- "It's a real faddy thing, a beautiful trend."
Boyer believes outdoor living has become so popular because "nature heals you" after coming home from a frustrating day at work.
"You're looking at the sky or sitting under a tree -- you're in nature, and its very healing and soothing," Boyer said. "It makes people relax. People take a second and hear the wind blowing through the trees, hear the birds singing; they appreciate the view more. ... That's why it's catching on."
Boyer practices what he preaches in his own back yard.
"Four years ago, I was in a head-on collision and was near death," he said. "(When I recovered) I knew I could not take life for granted anymore. I started building my garden with a passion. I started using all the plants I was saving for a special job, and I became that special job."
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Tim Gutierrez, owner of Pyramid Development for some 20 years, has been embellishing homes he has built with outdoor living spaces for the past 12 years. Gutierrez started doing what he calls "the Mediterranean look" at a time "when not that much outdoor living was going on."
It became so popular that most of the lavish homes he builds in Kahala have these outdoor amenities.
Gutierrez likes to "bring the outdoors in" even more by installing "pocket doors" throughout his homes that slide all the way open for a garden view.
Two years ago he built a home for Louis Warren of Kahala in a horseshoe shape around a swimming pool and rock waterfall. Warren said he and his wife, Mae, have "always wanted a home with a Hawaiian theme to it" and practically "live out by the swimming pool."
Warren said Gutierrez "did a magnificent job" of designing a home conducive to this lifestyle.
