“Please contact me if you would like a consultation or further information about any of the products you see here at Decorum.”Outdoors
Luxscaping
As I mentioned earlier, I went to Designex last week and was fortunate to hear Jamie Durie speak on trends for outdoor living.
The Outdoor Room
Jamie’s concept of The Outdoor Room is alive and well here in Australia. With our mostly sunny days, the garden has become an extension of the home. Similarly we are looking to the interiors for inspiration. As Jamie said, we are “luxscaping”.
An Outdoor Room by Jamie Durie
Numerous other cultures have been living outdoors for many, many years. Places like Thailand, Indonesia and Japan provide wonderful education for our relatively young country. The wind and sun can make it uncomfortable to spend too much time outside but now we have products that meet our needs and provide solutions.
We have wallpaper made from steel which can enhance a wall or create a division. Vertical gardens are the fastest growing trend thanks to the foresight of Patrick Blanc.
via Eco Concepts
Jamie also suggests that our gardens should not only look good but should taste good too. More families are concerned about the quality of the food they put on the table so if it’s grown in your own backyard it can provide shelter, protection and beauty into the bargain. Pear trees make a wonderful screen. Clever plant placement and selection will see a useful as well as decorative garden.
via Eco Concepts
One thing Jamie is adamant about is garden lighting. It’s true, our hardwork should be admired day and night, so a few lights along the path or highlighting a fantastic tree will enable the garden to be enjoyed even from the comfort of the cosy living room.
via Gardens At Night
One of the products on display around The Outdoor Room at Designex was sandstone cladding. This sandstone is 30mm thick on a bendable backing so can be wrapped around columns and walls and gives the appearance of something much more solid.
via ME Lighting
So with the onset of winter, now is the time to plan and plant your outdoor room so it’s ready to enjoy once the warmer weather returns.
Jamie has written a number of books which are available from my Book Shop.
Give me a home among the gum trees
Here we are, Monday again. Did you have a nice weekend?
The House's Study
I dragged the family along to Burke’s Backyard on Sunday afternoon. I’ve been talking about the 30 days of home and entertainment that is currently happening here in Sydney. Well the organisers have taken over a warehouse at Waterloo and converted it to their headquarters. Inside there are display rooms set up along with a kitchen classroom, market area and lecture room. The carpark has been converted to Burke’s Backyard.
The House's Living Room
For those of you who don’t know, Don Burke was the original lifestyle guru in Australia and for many years the nation would sit down to watch his one hour television show primarily on gardening but also touching on other backyard ideas like entertaining, cooking, pets, children’s play areas, etc. As with many of the television shows, a magazine was born and whilst Don no longer graces our televisions on a regular basis the magazine comes out each month.
Espaliered Kaffir Lime Tree
It’s amazing what they have done with the carpark. The area is a concrete slab yet for this month it has been converted into a relaxing oasis. There’s a chicken coup, pergola, raised platforms, paved areas, fruit trees, lavender bushes, magnolias, vegie patch and grass. (Ok so the grass is synthetic but it’s very realistic looking and feeling.)
Pergola and platforms
We sat and listened to the Lifestyle Editor of the magazine explain some of the trends of today’s garden which is pretty much everything they had in the space there.
Lush green grass on top of concrete
There is a big trend towards growing your own fruit, vegetables and herbs and instead of having a dedicated vegie patch, you can mix them with ornamental plants to create a blended garden. Growing vegies in a raised bed is also a good idea as it’s less back breaking when it comes to tending and harvesting. The display garden had the vegies growing in water tanks sitting on the ground.
Vegies grown in water tanks
If you have a large garden, consider breaking it up into smaller more manageable spaces that can be used for different purposes. Living and entertaining in our gardens has become a way of life. Whatever goes into a home can also go into a garden – day beds, pizza ovens, kitchens, fireplaces.
Outdoor entertaining via The Kitchen Place
There’s no limit when it comes to entertaining outdoors.
Cabana Club
Last year my daughter and a handful of her friends met once a month for a Book Club. It was really an excuse for a weekend play-date alternating at each members home.
This year the same group has created the Cabana Club. Again they go from house to house each month building a temporary cabana in which to hang out and drink mocktails. (Where do they come up with these ideas?)
Mocktails being served
The inaugural meeting was held at our home on Saturday afternoon and fortunately we were having a last burst of summer weather so the girls could play in the pool.
Inaugural Cabana at our house
So while the girls were chattering and dancing, eating and sipping, I searched the web for pool cabanas.
Something simple like this one from Landscape Designers Good Manors
Or perhaps a structure adjacent to the pool for entertaining, relaxing and cooking would be wonderful and really extend the living areas of a house.
via Australian House and Garden. Photographer Steve Ryan
A bite to eat between tennis and the pool.
This cabana has it all - fire, lounge seats, dining table and kitchen.
This cabana by Mabley Handler is decked out in summer colours
The girls would love this at the bottom of the garden. A fully equipped house just for the pool.
This is my favourite and belongs to cyclist Lance Armstrong. It looks very cosy.
What did you get up to this weekend?
Its in the Stars
I think we all read our astrology charts from time to time. Whether we live by the predictions or just read them for a laugh there are often things that ring true.
Many years ago I picked up a sheet on decorating styles for Virgos (which is me). There were many comments that made me wonder if there was something in decorating by the stars.
So when Jonathan Adler released these cushions, it reminded me to read a bit more about astrology decorating.
Needlepoint Cushions from Jonathan Adler
Virgos like an earthly retreat filled with natural materials and colours.They like to bring the outdoors in. We are no nonsense type of people and want simplicity and everything in it’s place.
from Australian House and Garden Photographer Andre Martin
Those born under the sign of Sagittarius (like my husband) like their homes to reflect their interst in travel and other cultures.
via Style Files
And Cancerians (like my daughter) require their home to be a retreat, as they are “stay-at-home” types and want security and then comfort.
via Point Click Home Photographer Keith Scott Morton
Have a look at decorating for your star sign and let me know if your home reflects your star sign.
Australian Style
Tomorrow is Australia Day. On 26 January 1788 Captain Arthur Phillip, commander of the First Fleet of eleven convict ships from Great Britain and the first governor of New South Wales, arrived at Sydney Cove. The raising of the Union Jack there symbolised British occupation of the eastern half of the continent claimed by Captain James Cook on 22 August in 1770.
Each year on this day we celebrate all things Australian – meat pies, kangaroos and Holden cars – to name a few. Being a Public Holiday, there are numerous events across the country. The back yard barbies get fired up and the beaches are packed.
So I thought I would take a look at what constitutes Australian Style. The Australian Financial Review compiled a quick snapshot of Australia this weekend and the following statistics were interesting.
90% of us live within an hour of the coast
65% of us own our own home
60% of us live in the five biggest cities
There are 22.1 million of us, growing at a rate of one new person every 1 minute and 11 seconds. That’s 443,000 per year of which 285,000 are immigrants and 158,000 are natural increases. Our overseas born population are made up of 4.3% from the UK, 2% from NZ, 1% from China, 1% from Italy and 0.8% Vietnam.
Image via studentservicesdirect.com.au
I picked up my copy of Australian Style which was first published in 1991 and subsequently reprinted a few times. The dust jacket sums up our style. “Australia is a kaleidoscope of parodoxes, a western democracy at the edge of Asia, an English penal colony that became a multicultural land of opportunity, a place where birds laugh and mammals lay eggs and everything familiar is somehow altered, suddenly unique.”
Australian Style
That about sums it up really, we do not have an Australian Style as such, but rather many different styles. We take influences from all corners of the globe as we travel the world. Tuscan inspired homes sit beside Californian Bungalows and modern apartments. Our geographic location has displaced us from our western heritage and we have been forced to adapt and develop our own style.
We are surrounded by colour. Lorikeets, beach, desert and rainforest all reflect the intense vibrant colours of our country. Our strong light, not seen anywhere else, is clear and hard. Our colour choices for homes and fashion are, therefore, bold.
Rainbow Lorikeet
Daintree Forest via theodora.com.au
Uluru via australiaadventures.com.au
There are however, some iconic Australian Styles in homes.
In Queensland, the timber homes were built on stumps or stilts with wide lattice enclosed verandahs. The stilts were to deter snakes and protect the home from floods. The lattice verandahs became semi-open bedrooms on hot summer nights.
A Classic Queenslander
Further south, Federation style homes and Californian Bungalows were being built during the first half of the 20th Century. These solid, double brick homes are still in demand today and are being extended to accommodate our current lifestyle.
Australian Federation Home
Californian Bungalow
After all, Australian Style is all about our lifestyle – relaxed and outdoors. The lines between inside and out have been blurred. Wide verandahs and courtyards have been translated to Jamie Durie’s Outdoor Room philosophy giving us more space to enjoy the great Australian climate. This Melbourne courtyard is a prime example.
Happy Australia Day for tomorrow!
How does your garden grow?
For those of you that don’t know, I’m a bit of an instant gratification girl. Therefore this business of colour and design really suits me as within a relatively short time I can suggest and implement a change and hey presto, it’s done! However, I do get alot of satisfaction from watching a garden take shape and that is never instant.
Behind this wall is our secret garden and over the past seven years it has been transformed. This photo was taken from Google Maps Street View.
We bought this house back in late 2002 and this is what the front garden looked like.
The centre of the garden had a huge Liquid Amber Tree in it and naturally nothing would grow underneath. Just before the house went on the market, I would say, a load of chip bark was spread underneath the tree. There was no path from the driveway or the front gate leading to the front door.
So after about six months, we mapped out a path using the garden hose and started digging. The base of the house, like most 80+ year old houses in this part of Sydney, has sandstone footings so it was decided we would use sandstone pavers for the path.
We then had some defined garden beds and planted underneath the tree with agapanthus and four strelitzias. The garden already has about 30 mature camelias and many clivia plants dotted around. We employed a landscape gardener to draw up some plans for the rest of the area and recommend some plants.
The garden seat we had made whilst we were living in the Solomon Islands, was given a paved spot against the front fence where we could take tea (yeah right!) and watch the garden grow.
The same principles for decorating on the inside apply in the garden and we changed textures for the winding narrow path off to the right, using loose pebbles. We had an electrician install some garden lights, one of which was a sunken spot light that would light up the foliage of the Liquid Amber at night.
A couple of years ago, we had the most bizarre storm on a Sunday afternoon which left our suburb looking as if we’d had snow. Something that NEVER happens in sub-tropical Sydney. It probably set the plant growth back a bit.
About a year later, we had another set back. One morning after a wild storm, we found half of the Liquid Amber lying across the plants. An aborist informed us that “these trees do that”. We figured we were lucky it had fallen between the house and the fence not damaging a thing except the struggling plants underneath. Council approved and we removed the tree.
This Christmas the agapanthus were out in mass and the garden certainly looked a picture.
The garden seat is well and truly protected now and I can usually find my daughter sitting there when I can’t find her anywhere else.
This was the scene from my dining room window. Isn’t it pretty?
Some things are worth waiting for…like this my 100th post!
Tablecloth
This time of year here in Australia, life seems to go at a slower pace. The kids are on extended school holidays and many of the adults take leave at this time too. Long, summer days are filled with relaxing at the beach or around a pool and sharing a meal outdoors. I have been noticing this table in a few places lately and it caught my eye again as I was catching up on my magazine reading.
Tablecloth Table
I love how the table looks like it is already dressed with a runner or cloth. No wonder it’s called “Tablecloth”. The vibrant colour choices are a great idea too adding some fun to your outdoor space.
Available Colours
You can have a more detailed look here.
Worst Dressed Wednesdays
Yellow is my favourite colour and it is an excellent colour to draw the eye or highlight a focal point. So it’s no wonder that this little Terrace House in inner Sydney caught my eye.
Yellow is the colour of Energy and Life and people that use yellow usually have a preference for sunshine. Maybe these homeowners were tired of being in the shadow of the Plane Tree.
Yellow has usually been seen in the kitchen or in children’s playrooms. I think this is a bit bright for the exterior of a house. What do you think?
Worst Dressed Wednesdays
This property is currently on the market. Maybe they are hoping that the red and green colour scheme will attract a pre-Christmas buyer. That combination always reminds me of Christmas no matter what or where it is placed. I think I’d be calling in the painters if I were to buy it. Oh and a Colour Consultant!
Apologies
I’m so sorry, I don’t have a Worst Dressed Wednesday house for you today. I have been so busy. Not that I haven’t seen any, I just haven’t been able to stop and take a snap as I drive past.
Screaming Yellow via Butt Ugly Houses
So I decided to do a Google search and came across this site which I must say, leaves some of my earlier posts for dead. Have a look for yourself.
