When you live in the northern latitudes, the warm months take on special meaning. It’s the time to throw off the heavy parka, slip on the flip-flops, and soak up the sunshine. It’s time to feel the freedom of being outdoors.
The fact that nature only provides a few months to do this makes summer all the more precious. So, while the outdoor spaces of houses up north may have shorter seasons of intensive use, they are no less enjoyed than their Sunbelt counterparts. And in pursuit of outdoor enjoyment, more northern homeowners are including fireplaces and heaters in the plans for their outdoor rooms, extending the season of use into both the spring and the fall.
But the landscape provides winter pleasures as well. When those bone-chilling winds blow in from Canada, windows framing the view of a beautifully landscaped yard laced with frost or blanketed with snow add to the pleasure of the inside rooms and make them feel that much more warm and sheltering.
In this issue, you’ll visit two custom landscapes in places where one ordinarily might want to stay indoors for a good part of the year. The owners of these houses—one in Michigan and the other in Vermont—wisely chose to look outward to add to the livability of their homes. They embraced not only the elements of their northern locales, but also features of their sites that some would see as negatives. Their transformed sites provide what all good landscapes should—year-round delight from the outside looking in and the inside looking out, whatever the weather.
