The trend these days is to bring the indoors out – with patio refrigerators and bars, poolside pavilions and pillowed chairs. Often overlooked is the far simpler task of bringing the outdoors in.
To get started, just wander through a farm stand, says Bonnie Trust Dahan, whose book, “Living With the Seasons: Creating a Natural Home” (Chronicle, $27.50), is photographed by Shaun Sullivan and styled by Anthony Albertus.
Those speckled quail eggs that are too pretty to eat? Instead of stowing them in your refrigerator, set them out in a ceramic bowl. That architectural bundle of asparagus? Stand it in a vase as a seasonal trophy.
If sweet pears or damson plums are in season, line them up on your mantel. If you’ve just shelled delicious green peas, place them in a beautiful bowl.
And don’t fret if your artful displays are eaten. “Nature changes all the time and so should your rooms,” Dahan says.
While some of her freshest natural decorating ideas pertain to fruits and vegetables – which, she notes, are typically less expensive than flowers – Dahan has no prejudice against garden blooms.
She’s all for mason jars of blowzy roses. She loves white coffee cups of forget-me-nots and bouquets of yarrow that hang beside sunny windows.
Her book is an ode to what she calls “the simple act of noticing.” She believes that if you tune into the moment a bud becomes a blossom, if you pay attention to the geometry of bare branches, you can create “a haven that comforts and nurtures you from the inside out.”
Once upon a time, living in accordance to the seasons happened systematically. Come summer, rugs were rolled up, heavy curtains were taken down and cool slipcovers draped over velvet chairs. There were rituals that shifted decor as the seasons shifted. But today, it’s all too easy to race through the year in climate-controlled splendor.
Dahan advises setting aside a few hours on a Saturday to rearrange your home so that it celebrates seasonal changes in light and views. Move your sofa so it’s looking at a window instead of the hearth. Fill your fireplace with pots of greenery. If yarrow and lavender are blooming outside your window, change your pillows so you’ll carry their colors inside.
If you want to carry nature inside a little more directly, pack an antique children’s wagon with potted plants and wheel it right up to your sofa. You’ll have to find a place to stash your coffee table – and your newspaper. But for the glorious weeks of the summer season, it’s delightful to upend your routine and admire such potted beauties as bacopa, diascia, moss ferns, artemisia and boxwood.
For added greenery, grow grass. Decorators love verdant flats of grass because they offer a crisp geometric alternative to flowers. But you don’t have to go to a fancy florist to get some of your own. Just sow a handful of grass seeds, either in a wooden flat or in a series of terra cotta pots. In no time, you’ll have a patch of greenery that will be the envy of any croquet player.
The idea is to transplant nature – maybe it’s grass, maybe it’s a flat of lettuce plunked in a wide, flat copper bowl – in ways that change the color and texture of your house.
“Be playful, break the rules,” Dahan advises.
One of her cleverest decorating strategies is to re-create the look of falling blossoms and leaves on a dining table. In spring, she’ll scatter laurel leaves and tuberose heads. Come winter, she’ll change her tablescape to crimson berries and branches, all set off by a red woven table runner.
Look around you and you’ll find hundreds of ways to decorate with nature. Experiment with seashells and beach glass, sprigs of lavender, purple heads of cabbage, green pods of peas.
Play with color and texture, taste and smell. Mix daffodils with leeks in spring, pair ruby-red cherries and poppies in summer. Let autumn leaves mingle with autumn apples and allow the red pyracantha berries of winter blend with pine cones and pomegranates.
As Dahan writes, a simple glance outdoors is all you need to discover “nature’s subtle grace, extraordinary palette and abundance of ingredients.”
