“Home Outside”, by Julie Moir Messervy

Messervy, Julie Moir. Home Outside: Creating the Landscape You Love. Newtown, CT: Taunton, 2009. Print.

I’m starting to wonder if I will ever find a Taunton publication that I don’t thoroughly approve of.  This was no exception; I came across it in the context of Sarah Susanka’s Not so Big House series, since Messervy was the co-author (or perhaps just author?) of Outside the Not-So-Big House, which I read in 2009 but can’t specifically recall (hence these “reviews”, or perhaps I should give up and just call them “records”).

In any case, this book had inspiring pictures, but augmented that with theory and explanations of just why it is that the pictures are so appealing.  I was raised with the somewhat-traditional method of foundation planting around a house, and although I knew I wasn’t keen on cutting a half-acre of grass at our new/old farmhouse, I didn’t have a clear vision of what options I might have.

This book showed me plenty of options, and how to create them.  In a neat coincidence (or are they all inter-related?), her thoughts about outdoor rooms echoed what I’d been recently reading in Patterns of Home, and it was easy for me to see how various patterns were expressed in gardens outside houses as well as inside them.  By thinking of my farmhouse surround as having “rooms” for activities like hanging out laundry, growing vegetables, and entertaining, I can start to shape one big, daunting space into a series of connected, comfortable hangouts.

This doesn’t come naturally to me, but this is why I love reading – to expand my skills and knowledge, and use them to create beauty in my life.