We are wrong!
One of the most common mistakes made in the Dutch garden is the placement of the patio. Conveniently, the main terrace is placed directly behind the facade in front of the garden doors. And that is precisely often not the right place to put the patio. Why not? Garden designer Gert-Jan Schouwenaar of Sparq Gardens explains.
In the Netherlands, we experience the garden from the interior for much of the year. So the line of sight from inside to outside is very important. So if the patio is laid directly behind the facade, we put the table and chairs directly in our main line of sight. And so with that, the line of sight gets shorter!
So where is the best place to lay the patio? It is often enough to move the patio a few feet to the left or right. The line of sight will then remain clear and the distance from the house to the terrace will not be too great.
Wrong placement of the terrace:
Size of the terrace
“When I trained as a garden and landscape architect in the late 1980s, I still learned that a terrace of 3 x 3 meters or 4 x 4 meters was sufficient. Today we want a little more space. A terrace for a large dining table and chairs is therefore soon about 4 x 6 meters. That gives enough room to move around the table and there is also room to place a barbecue, for example, on the terrace,” says Gert-Jan Schouwenaar.
Terrace material
“In many cases it is nice to make the terrace of a different material than the path to it. That way you subtly indicate what is a walkway and what is a living space. For example, if the paths in the garden are made of clinkers, make the terrace out of large tiles or decking.”
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