A living room in your backyard

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Make use of your outdoor space for entertaining, Carol Bucknell writes.

Designers have been describing gardens as outdoor rooms for decades.

Great US landscape architect Thomas Church, who wrote the classic Gardens are for People in the middle of the last century, strongly advocated outdoor living in our gardens but even he would have been flabbergasted by the extent to which we're now embracing this idea. In the early 21st century, we're not only relaxing, entertaining, playing, cooking and eating outdoors, we're also working, listening to music, bathing, meditating, sleeping and exercising there, too. After all, if you can do these things inside, why not outside as well?

Exiting the TV and computer room is no bad thing for any of us, particularly children, but how do we create outdoor rooms large enough for so many activities when gardens are so much smaller these days?

Start as you would with any indoor room, with a wish-list. Drilling down on the things you absolutely must have in your outdoor room will give you a clear idea of the amount of space you'll need, as well as materials, furniture, appliances and decorative items.

When space is tight you may have to be flexible in your planning. For instance, if you're keen to have an outdoor fireplace, could it also be used for screening, seating and storage? If you're a sunlover but your spouse is not, some form of flexible sunshade might be the ticket, one with electronic louvres or a retractable function.

Location, location

Outdoor rooms should, as their name suggests, combine the freedom and openness of nature with the shelter and cosiness of a room. Finding the right balance between the two is key to your enjoyment. Rooms that are thoroughfares are never relaxing spaces to be in, whether they are inside the house or out. Is there a space in your garden that's accessible yet away from the main circulation routes?

Think also about sun, shade, wind exposure, traffic noise and fumes - will you need some form of screening for these?

To create the same sense of intimacy you find in a room, an outdoor space needs to be enclosed on at least two sides and ideally from above as well. Incorporate existing structures such as the walls of the house, garage or shed or garden walls and fences if budgets are tight. You can then attach lightweight screens (eg, mesh fabric, steel mesh, trellis, bamboo, brushwood) to the more solid structures, or use planting such as hedges or tall flaxes.

Overhead shelter structures come in many different forms: pergolas, gazebos, shade sails, perhaps just a DIY frame covered in saris or manuka branches.

If you like looking at the sky or want the sun to penetrate, consider a semi-transparent "roof" such as trellis, brushwood or bamboo. Some form of opaque screen to block views from above is a good idea in spaces that are overlooked by taller buildings and using waterproof materials to shelter your outdoor room from the rain will allow you to use it much more.

Alfresco dining

Most likely your outdoor room wish list will include cooking facilities whether it's a traditional barbecue, pizza oven or flash rotisserie. Foodies often go for a multi-functional outdoor dining experience with, say, a pizza oven, lamb rotisserie, smoker and built-in barbecue but this requires plenty of space and money. Unless you're really skilled in spatial planning you might also need a professional landscape designer to point you in the right direction when it comes to choosing appliances and selecting the best position for them.

As well as cooking facilities think about how many people you'll normally be feeding and whether they'll all be sitting at a table or balancing their plates on their knees. An eight-seater outdoor table with space to move around the table comfortably needs an area of at least 4m x7m with barbecues, benches, sinks and other food preparation facilities requiring even more space.