Around the beginning of September every year, people as a whole seem to agree that garden season has come to an end. Garden furniture goes back into storage. Cushions go away into boxes. The area that enjoyed all that attention for months and was tended and cared for gets forgotten until next year.
Autumn outdoor living is not a compromise, as it sometimes appears to be. The right day in early autumn – with the warm air around 7pm, that special amber light playing through the changing foliage, the garden finally quiet after all the summer hustle and bustle – rivals anything you have had in June. The question is not if autumn outdoor living is good for you. It is whether your garden is set up to accommodate it.
What Garden Season Extension Actually Requires
The summer garden is all about sunlight, heat and abundance. Autumn gardens demand something more thoughtful – defined spaces that appear to be intentional, boundaries that make your spaces enclosed but not confining, and details that look good under softer lights of the season rather than just survive the winter.
Heating and lighting solve a part of problems. Outdoor heating unit will give you comfortable evenings. Good lighting will address the issue of earlier sunsets. However, they will only work properly in the spaces that are enclosed and purposeful. Heaters in a boundary-free garden will just become invisible in its surroundings. If the same heater operates in a properly designed boundary-defined space, it creates a truly warm environment.
The Boundary-as-Room-Divider Principle
Interior designers know intuitively that rooms need to be defined. Open plan spaces, however popular, require arranging of furniture and visual anchor points to feel inhabited, rather than spacious. The same applies to gardens, and boundaries are the main means to achieve that.
Metal railings and gates are not only about marking of the property limits. Used skillfully in the garden, they make garden spaces properly defined and thus give your outdoor area its purpose. Low section of railing, separating a patio from the rest of the garden, will create room-within-a-garden effect that will make your outdoor furniture look purposeful.
That is especially important for autumn outdoor living. Defined spaces feel warmer psychologically before any heating becomes involved. They make you feel enclosed in the place which makes October evenings intimate, not exposed. Boundaries-less gardens feel too open in cold weather – the type of openness that is refreshing in July, but feels unwelcoming in October.
Our Classic and Regent collections work great for the purpose – vertical lines make visual boundaries apparent without creating visual heft. Our Saxon and Manor designs will add decorative element to the gardens where architectural details are needed.
Autumn Light and Metal's Particular Appeal
Autumn lights do something special to quality metalwork. Summer harsh sun flattens everything and removes all the shadows. Light coming at a lower angle from September till November brings the long shadows and textured light that make metalwork beautiful, not acceptable.
Patterns created by scrollwork in our Warwick and Henley collections fall on the surface of paving or lawn as shadow shapes that change throughout the day in ways summer light does not produce. Finishes of powder-coating that appear nice and neat in summer will bring you depth and sophistication in autumn lighting that pays attention to details. The properties that look nice and smart in July look distinguished in October – if your metalwork is quality enough to deserve such close attention.
Seasonal aesthetic advantage makes the additional investment into metalwork worthwhile beyond its obvious security and boundary function. The gardens designed to look good throughout the year, rather than just during summer peak, bring you satisfaction during much longer period.
Practical Considerations for Season Extension
Protection from wind plays a crucial role in feasibility of autumn outdoor living. Still 12°C air will be comfortable. The same temperature with constant wind will drive everybody inside in minutes.
Solid fence panels provide maximum wind protection but bring enclosing effect that can be oppressive. Metalwork railings give you partial protection – they break the wind speed without blocking the air flow – and maintain the feeling of space characteristic for gardens.
Balancing point depends on wind exposure of your particular site. Wind-exposed gardens benefit from more solid boundary treatment on the sides of prevailing winds. Sheltered gardens accommodate open metalwork without losing the comfort.
Positioning of garden gates affects greatly the flow of outdoor living. Side gates providing convenient access between the gardens and garden gates controlling transition between the zones determine how comfortably your outdoor spaces are used. Access that is awkward discourages usage. Conveniently positioned access makes outdoor living easy.
The Longer Season Mindset
Gardens that bring maximum satisfaction are not always the biggest and most elaborately planted ones. They are the ones designed to be inhabited throughout the year, not the ones working in summer only. Such approach changes each and every design decision – from choice of furniture through plantings to boundaries.
At Metal Gates Direct, we provide boundary solutions to gardens all over the UK throughout the year. One of the common points of feedback from our customers who invested in quality metalwork is a pleasant surprise of how their gardens improved in autumn specifically – the season they usually left without much thought.
October evenings are worth planning for. Gardens ready to bring you such pleasure are the ones whose owners stopped thinking of garden season as of something that ends when summer does.