Decks and Porches Can Brighten Your Life

Porches and decks can be wonderful things, particularly in warm and sunny climates, where their shade and their openness to any passing breeze make them welcome additions to a house. But they may be equally valuable in wet climates, for there they provide a chance to be outdoors when the weather is showery, a place to enjoy the music of the rain or simply relax or to hang out. But porches can also be dank, neglected, cobwebby places, presenting a barrier to our natural impulse to be out and in the garden. That is to say that, like any other house or garden effect, they require careful planning.

Do you want a Deck or a Porch?
Pool decks are an architectural consideration, requiring a good architect or a local deck craftsman whose work is proven, to evaluate its appropriateness to the house itself and its structural soundness. But the services of a good landscape designer might also be secured in order to determine how an existing porch or one proposed as an addition can best be an enhancement to the pool. For a porch, when spacious, well built, and successfully related to the landscape around it, offers the magical sense of being both indoors and outdoors at once. Furniture too fragile for exposure to the elements can be left there, and pots of shade-loving flowers and cool ferns can be gracefully staged about. A flowering vine, perhaps a wisteria or honeysuckle, can be trained about the eaves, forming a fragrant bower of shade. Tall evergreens or old-fashioned flowering shrubs might be grouped below the structure, their tops just equal to its floor. There should be a swing, certainly, and as often as possible a frosty pitcher of lemonade or of iced tea. Such a picture tugs at our collective national memory, and those over whom it has most power will want nothing else.

Decks might well be considered a sort of midway structure between porches and terraces; like porches, they are made of wood, and when attached to wooden houses, provide both structurally and materially a transition from house to garden. Like terraces, however, decks are open to the elements, suggesting much of the expansiveness we often associate with lawns. But the emotional resonances of decks are quite different from those of porches or of terraces. The word is nautical and suggests an adventurous, free-floating quality. Decks are, in fact, best when they convey this feeling, of being on a raft, perhaps, with the plants of the garden pressing close about; or of being in a tree house, surveying the terrain (but not, if it can be helped, the neighbors) from a platform high above the surrounding vegetation.

Decks are enormously popular, for they are the least expensive way of achieving a hard-surfaced outdoor living area, and their construction is not beyond even the unskilled house owner. But decks are not appropriate to all areas or all house styles. Wooden decks are best where the climate is warm and dry, or where stiff breezes periodically blow away muggy conditions. In dank, wet climates, the wood can become slimy with algae; and though the algae might eventually support moss, creating a moody Japanese sort of effect, it will still be treacherous and uncomfortable underfoot. And in climates that know snow and sleety rain, decks can become genuinely life-threatening, shovel, sweep, and sand how you will. Decks are also a fairly recent concept, virtually unknown in American garden design before the fifties, and so they seem best when associated with contemporary house designs. Though they can sometimes be tactfully associated with houses of traditional design, they can often look stuck on, a concession to economy where more traditional porches and terraces would have better served, at least from an aesthetic point of view.

Then there’s the question of the wood itself. If your deck is to be frequently and laboriously painted, you can use almost any wood you please, and the effect will be as glossy as any millionaire’s yacht. Generally, however, people who build decks want a softer, more natural, weathered effect than frequent painting can offer. So rot-resistant wood must be used. Both West Coast redwood and East Coast cedar are highly resistant to decay, and both weather to an attractive shade of gray that harmonizes well with plants. Much less costly–and much less nice–is pressure-treated Southern pine. Apart from any concerns you might have for the health of the carpenter who must work with this chemical-laden wood, there are several other reasons why this might be a poor choice for decking. Pressure-treated wood holds its unattractive yellow-green color for a long time, looking poisonous whether it is or not. And timbers of pressure-treated wood are often very unstable, since they are impregnated with preservatives while still green and remain so, it appears, even after considerable exposure to the elements. Because of this treatment they will twist, crack, and checker in the alternating wet and dry conditions of the outdoors.

Of the three types of outdoor living spaces under consideration, terraces are by far the most elegant. Nothing consorts so beautifully with plants as stone or brick, for they are of the earth itself, and they may be set on the earth in such a way as to become an integrated part of the garden. Plants can even be allowed to seed themselves in the cracks between stone or brick laid on sand, thus intensifying the harmonious blending of hard surface and living garden. Further, there is not style of architecture that will not gracefully accommodate a carefully sited terrace of the appropriate materials.

Where stone is used, the first choice should be of stone native to the place, if possible, for then the terrace will be of a piece with the boulders and outcroppings in the garden itself or in the surrounding countryside. Where native stone of adequate quality is unavailable, imported stone can be used, assuming one’s pocket is deep enough, for it is always costly. Imported stone should be selected with great care, however, for it can often look anomalous. Before incurring its expense, a homeowner should try to see a garden in which it has been used, rather than settle for the mounted samples offered by many stoneyards. And if one intends to lay the terrace oneself, it is wise to talk with an experienced mason, paying for an hour or two of his or her time, to determine whether it is best to lay the stone on sand or concrete, what provisions should be made for drainage and heaving from frost, and especially what percentage of waste there will be in one’s choice of stone, for it usually comes in pallets that may include fragments too small or uneven for use in terracing.

Brick is a desirable alternative to stone, though it creates a more formal and dressy surface, and so should be in harmony with the house it is meant to enhance. When choosing brick, it is important to be sure that it will withstand the rigors of one’s climate; for in the East, particularly, the most beautiful brick–antique “common” brick salvaged from old warehouses and factories–will quickly become punky and flake away when exposed to repeated freezing and thawing. As an alternative, one may be offered brick suitable for outdoor paving, usually called “water struck brick.” Though durable, it always looks hard, cold, and somehow institutional, and no amount of wear or age will soften its appearance. Attractive brick that combines the visual softness of antique weathered brick and the durability of water struck brick is available, and is worth both the search and the price. But again, before committing to any brick, the homeowner should see terraces and walks where it has been used, and preferably endured two or three winters. Probably no brick is indestructible in harsh climates, however, and so brick terraces are best laid in sand so that the odd rotten one can be easily lifted and replaced.

Though porches are always attached to the house, the siting of terraces and decks depends on the use they are intended to have. Most will be places to gather socially, to eat and drink, talk or sunbathe, and so they should be attached to the house or be conveniently near it. The closer to the kitchen they are, the better. They should also offer possibilities for sitting in sun or in shade for most of the day and in most seasons. So, if the shadow of the house does not offer shade, a pergola, arbor, or small tree should be placed to one side. Above all, any outdoor living structure should suggest privacy and gentle enclosure; so a hedge, trellis, or thick planting of shrubs becomes an important component of these spaces, as much for the feeling of security they give as actually to battle the gaze of passersby.

Though most people will be chiefly concerned with outdoor living spaces that serve social functions, there are other values, essentially contemplative ones, that such spaces might have. When no one else is around, almost any of the features discussed can provide a spot for the busy gardener to sit, to settle into the garden, and to stare at it. The values of contemplation are so important, so spiritually necessary, that a quiet spot might well be contrived just to provide them. Thus, any garden, however small, might include a small terrace tucked into a corner of the shrubbery. Such a place might be thought of as the gardener’s study, a place to retire to, sheltered from the world, even from friends, family, and responsibility. It should be a place to read, to put down the book and think, to come to harmony with one’s self and the world beyond. Such a place needn’t be large; indeed, it shouldn’t be.