Inside outside : a sourcebook of inspired garden rooms / Linda O'Keeffe.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

An inspiring guide to creating stylish and livable outdoor spaces



An outdoor room is an extension of the home--a space that can used for entertaining, relaxing, cooking, playing, swimming, and more. In spaces large and small, outdoor rooms offer a retreat from daily life and a connection to nature. In Inside Outside , Linda O'Keeffe--former creative director of Metropolitan Home --will inspire you to create an outdoor living space that offers an oasis of comfort and style. O'Keeffe uses the language of interior design to inform her approach to exterior design, focusing on space, structure, movement, mood, and furniture.



Inside Outside is filled with private gardens from North America and Europe that are inspiring and illustrative examples. From dramatic topiaries and black tulips in Massachusetts to the living wall in the courtyard of a Paris penthouse, fresh ideas permeate both the gardens found within this book and the design thinking behind them.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

O'Keefe, former creative director of Metropolitan Home magazine, delivers an opulent look at equally lavish green spaces. There are no portraits of the owners, but a sense of personality imbues each garden featured-a total of 25 in all, in locales that include Tuusula, Finland, and San Marino, Calif. These are places to spark desire in any avid gardener: vast cultivated landscapes, clipped and espaliered to perfection; long vistas framed in hedge-encased doorways; and spaces designed around urns, spheres, and sculptures. Even the most modest garden evokes a living ballroom. Both implicitly and explicitly, O'Keefe equates the layout of gardens with interior design. She observes at one point that "some of the flowers, vines, and shrubs are so decoratively intrusive they could be wallpaper," and later laments that landscape design lacks interior design's strict color formulas (60% anchor color; 30% supporting color; 10% accent color). She fills that void, however, with plentiful guidelines contained in paragraph-long sidebars on the place of shape, framing, texture, and even humor in garden design. O'Keefe's practical advice, alongside captions describing the plant or technique being featured, will make this visually rich book as at home in the garden as it is on the coffee table. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Linda O'Keeffe is a distinguished design writer and editor who has been working in design for over three decades, including sixteen years as the creative director of Metropolitan Home magazine. She currently lectures, moderates panels, contributes to a variety of shelter and architecture publications, and appears regularly on radio and television design programs. She is the author of many books, including Shoes: A Celebration of Pumps, Sandals, Slippers & More ; Stripes: Design Between the Lines ; Heart and Home: Rooms That Tell Stories .