Bringing the outside in and taking the inside out!

Agapanthus needs to be acclimatized

This is the time of the year when the plants in the conservatory have to be taken outside on a daily basis for hardening off. When dusk approaches they are brought back inside. I keep an eye on the Met Office weather forecasts and if it is likely to be a mild night then the plants may be left outside. But more often than not they are brought back into the safety of the conservatory.

The conservatory is also a space for relaxing and by the beginning of May the notion of bringing the outside in becomes more important. This essentially involves trying to make a natural transition between the greenery of the conservatory house plants and the vegetation of the patio and pond.

Inside meets outside

Lilium Queen of the Night

 
It is now rather dated to want a neat border between home and garden, apparently the latest dreadful buzzword in home design is “transterior” – where there’s an utterly seamless segue from one to the other.

The ideal is a much more symbiotic outcome, where buildings are more sympathetic to the landscape outside, and vice versa. Twenty years ago, the must have was the ‘outdoor room’. Today the indoor and outdoor are being designed merge, with elements of greenery joining the spaces with more natural materials  inside, and the architecture flowing outside.

Top tip: while most of us cannot easily redesign the architecture of our homes, we can bring the outside in with the judicial placement of seasonal pots by the front, back and conservatory doors. A simple illusion of bringing the garden closer to the indoors. Combined with a plant pot on the windowsill enables the "bringing of the outside in and the inside out."