How invit­ing is this space to you?

Patios are often the main social gath­er­ing place in your land­scape. The con­cept of an out­door room finds its fullest expres­sion with the patio as it can be an exten­sion of your fam­i­lies func­tional liv­ing space for the bet­ter part of three sea­sons each year. The truth is that not all patios are cre­ated equal because not all patios are well designed.

Here are a few of the com­mon prob­lems we see with patios that are under used:

1.  The patio is too small — We see this all too often. Some­times this is the unfor­tu­nate result of an attempt to save money and some­times it is the result of under­es­ti­mat­ing the space actu­ally needed to enter­tain.  Either way, you will not be inclined to use a patio that is too small for your needs.

2.  It lacks a strong con­nec­tion to your kitchen — If you have to travel through sev­eral indoor rooms to bring food from the house out to the patio chances are you will use your patio space less. Even if you’re cook­ing food out­doors, chances are, you are still prepar­ing food in the kitchen.

3. It has set­tled and is uneven –This is often due to an insuf­fi­cient struc­tural base under the sur­face. Another cause can be due to improper drainage caus­ing the patio to be sub­ject to sea­sonal freez­ing and heaving.

4.  Wrong mate­r­ial choice — This is often an over­looked detail but if your inten­tion is to do some for­mal enter­tain­ing then you need to install a paving mate­r­ial that is amenable to for­mal footwear. It is dif­fi­cult nav­i­gat­ing across even stone in heels while try­ing not to get stuck in the spaces between espe­cially in the reduced light of the evening (this task gets even more chal­leng­ing after sev­eral cocktails!).

5.  It’s lack­ing pri­vacy - Noth­ing is worse than feel­ing like your on pub­lic dis­play every time you go out to your patio to eat a meal, have a con­ver­sa­tion or even read a book.

6.  No space for your grill — If we had a dol­lar for every awk­wardly placed grill we’ve seen due to lack of plan­ning, we would have enough money to treat you all (or at least many of you) to a deli­cious barbecue.

The good news is that if you’re con­sid­er­ing adding a patio you can avoid these com­mon pit­falls by invest­ing in land­scape design. The end result will be a higher return on your land­scape invest­ment through greater use and enjoy­ment of your out­door spaces.

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