Where to put your patio?

Most people I speak to still hold the conventional view that their patio should be immediately outside their back doors.

In my experience this is not so in more than half of the designs I create.

In this example we can see that the garden slopes up sharply from the back of the house.

The clients idea was to have a patio on the lower area, tight up against the house and the a retaining wall to hold the lawn back.

I suggested that we reverse that idea and put the patio area on top of the retaining wall to extend it into the garden further and allow room for some attractive planting around it.

This design also had the advantage of keeping the areas around the doors clear for good access and screening off the driveway from the garden.