TIME TO MOVE IT OUTSIDE Written by Lou Ann Wilcox
As we spend more time at home, many of us have decided that the views from our windows are not giving us the joy we seek. With vaccinations increasing, more safety protocols in place, and sunshine and warm weather imminent, spring 2021 promises to be a more positive time than one year ago. As we prepare to spend more time outdoors, we reached out to three notable St. Louis landscape designers and architects to learn how people are transforming their outdoor space to better accommodate their lives. All three acknowledge that they have gotten a lot busier in the past year. “We are seeing a significant re-think in how homes are designed and how landscape interacts with the home,” says Tony Frisella Jr., a third-generation landscape designer and vice president of sales with Frisella Landscape Group. “People want to make memories and create experiences in their outdoor space -- with families, parents and grandparents. People are nostalgic for simpler times.” Matt Moynihan, founder and principal designer at Matthew Moynihan & Associates, agrees. “The game’s changing though. Because of our climate (extremes of hot and cold), people are used to having an indoor area with lots of glass so you feel like you are outside. Now, it is truly outdoors. Families are turning their outdoor space into entertainment areas with fireplaces, outdoor kitchens, sports courts, water features. Young home owners especially are interested in playing, cooking, and eating in outdoor areas.” Doug Beckmann, general manager and a certified arborist with M&P Landscaping, Inc., is seeing more play space in outdoor living areas such as sport courts which are paved surfaces for things like roller hockey, basketball, and pickleball as kids are home more. “Discretionary income that was previously spent on trips is being redirected to landscaping and outdoor living areas,” Beckmann notes. “We have worked on projects as small as building a fire pit to installing water features with some projects taking up to 18 months to complete.” Beckmann adds that the outdoor space needs to be functional as well as private, basically creating an outdoor room with privacy screening provided by masonry or carpentry structures, hardscape elements, or living green screens using various types of plant materials. 26 slmag.net
