Backyards
Outdoor living: Casual backyard oasis
Backyards
Outdoor living: Casual backyard oasis
This petite English-style garden in Toronto's east end is perfect for a relaxed yet sophisticated family hangout.
It's a good thing that homeowner and decorator Christine Hanlon's kids, Sophie, 9, and Henry, 6, love to garden alongside their mom. Over the past six years, Christine and her husband, Andrew Brady, have turned their formerly bare and grassy 30-by-50-foot Toronto backyard into a verdant English-style garden, reducing the total lawn area by more than half. "It was a purely selfish decision," admits Christine, who also removed a sandbox. While some kids might protest, Christine and Andrew's have been bitten by the gardening bug. "They have their own little tools and gloves, and are really starting to love it," she says. "And there's still enough space for games of soccer or to put out a waterslide on hot summer days."
Plenty of grown-up fun happens here, too, when the couple entertains on the spacious backyard deck. With new sliding doors that lead from the kitchen to outside, and a pergola topped with lattice to help diffuse the sun's strong rays on the west-facing deck, "It really feels like an outdoor room," says Christine. Wanting to keep the overall look soft and serene, she had the deck and pergola stained in an opaque pale grey tone, the perfect complement to the outdoor resin wicker furniture. Generous lounge seating on one half of the deck, plus a dining table that seats up to eight people on the other, means the family's living quarters are substantially bigger when the weather is balmy.
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