Inside Outside Living: How to ensure your home and garden work well together

Guest written by Sam Proctor MSGD MAPL of Chiltern Garden Design

If you’re updating your home, much of your focus will likely be on the interior spaces and how to make them flow well together. Modern living tends towards the open plan, with large sliding or bi-fold doors often being added to the rear of homes, affording great views into the garden.

With such large and framed views out, it’s really important to give some serious thought to what you’ll be looking out onto. Working with a professional garden designer can really help you to refine your thinking and work towards an outdoor plan that works in harmony with your indoors.

Large framed views need careful consideration when planning your interior.

Garden Design: Chiltern Garden Design Photography: Nigel Proctor Photography

Quite often, a garden designer is called in by clients at the end of a build or refurb process, when all the focus has been on the interior, and they are left with a disappointing view of a trashed lawn, builders’ rubble and a bleak fenced boundary. Although this isn’t ideal, it’s still not too late to work our magic and turn this into a usable, attractive and practical space for you and your family.

A garden designer will help you work out the best layout for your space, to make every centimetre work for you, giving you room to entertain, cook, relax, play and enjoy the fresh air, depending on how you and your family want to live. Generously sized entertaining spaces to step out onto from your new doors, with room for cooking, eating and lounging are extremely popular. Working alongside your interior designer, a garden designer can ensure that the spaces flow smoothly from indoors to outside, and that they work together aesthetically too, from planting colour schemes and materials choices, to atmospheric lighting, furniture and accessories.

Working out the best layout for your space, to make every centimetre work for you.

Garden Design: Chiltern Garden Design Photography: Nigel Proctor Photography

Bringing nature close to the house is important, so we will typically advise clients not to simply pave over the whole of the rear of the property, pushing planted borders out towards the boundaries. We will look at light and how it moves around your garden during the day and through the seasons, helping you to make the best of available sunlight. A professional designer can help you tackle difficult areas in your garden, like dry shady spaces, slopes and damp, boggy soils, and come up with creative solutions that make the most of the vailable space.

Choosing materials that will give you long term enjoyment of the garden, and can stand up to all weathers is as important than just immediate aesthetics. A garden designer will also guide you through all the ins and outs of changing levels, dealing with drainage, boundaries and screening as well as planning and legal matters surrounding your project.

Materials that will stand the test of time are just as important as aesthetics

Garden Design: Chiltern Garden Design Photography: Nigel Proctor Photography

Your home improvement project gives you an opportunity to rethink your outside spaces too. Speak to a garden designer as early as you can into the project, so we can help you to make the most of it, and create the indoor-outdoor living experience of your dreams!

You can pop along and meet Sam in person at this year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2024, where she will be exhibiting a Water Saving Garden in the Container Gardens category.