How to Landscape Around an Outdoor Kitchen
Outdoor kitchens add functionality to your outdoor space and are enjoyed by homeowners in both warm and cooler climates. Your outdoor kitchen can include traditional outdoor cooking equipment, such as a grill for barbecuing, as well as traditionally indoor equipment, such as a sink, oven or even refrigerator. To incorporate your outdoor kitchen into your outdoor living space, plan the surrounding landscape carefully. Does this Spark an idea?
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Instructions
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Start the landscape outside of your outdoor kitchen. You need space within it to move around and cook. The concrete foundation for your outdoor kitchen should leave enough room for you to walk between appliances and for more than one person to be within the outdoor kitchen space.
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Match the landscape around your outdoor kitchen with the landscape around your pool, patio and deck. Like areas inside your home, your outdoor kitchen should blend nicely with other outside design elements.
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Use lighting in the landscape design. Place safety lighting around the outside of the kitchen area, as well as along the path leading to it. This is especially important if your outdoor kitchen is raised slightly from the ground beneath it.
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Choose landscaping materials carefully. They need to be able to withstand any severe weather all year round. Some materials that will last and hold up even in harsher climates include polymer, brick, natural stone, marble, granite and slate.
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Bring indoor elements outdoors. To create a seamless feel from your indoor living space to your outdoor kitchen, incorporate a few design elements from indoors to tie everything together. This can be as simple as a dash of colored tile behind the outdoor sink to as elaborate as an entire stone floor that matches your indoor entrance way or kitchen.
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Match the size of the shrubbery surrounding the kitchen to the height of the kitchen off the ground. The shrubbery should never reach so high that a falling piece of shrub could drop on a stove and increase the chance of fire.
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Purchase hanging ivy for a surround fence to block the view from outside the kitchen without having to put up a barrier.
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Plant flower beds that fit with your overall theme. For example, bright, colorful flowers will go well with a kitchen that has more of a cottage-style design, while plants with interesting greenery will go well with a more modern style of kitchen.
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References
- Photo Credit Todd Warnock/Lifesize/Getty Images
