The Morning Terrace
A small, quiet space designed to be used before the day starts.
The fictional brief
What the homeowner asked for
A fictional homeowner couple told us the back of the house faced a steep bank of overgrown shrubs and they only ever stepped outside to reach the bins. What they wanted was modest: somewhere to sit with coffee, out of view of the neighbours, without a project that swallowed the whole garden.
This concept is deliberately small. It shows what happens when a plan is written around one specific habit—two people, two chairs, first hour of the day—rather than around filling the available square footage.
Design choices
Why the concept looks like this
Placed for early light, not for symmetry
The terrace sits off-centre against the house so it catches morning sun and keeps the afternoon glare behind a planted screen. Centring it would have looked tidier on paper and been less pleasant to sit in.
Irregular stone to soften a tight footprint
Large-format rectangular paving would have made the space read like a corridor. Irregular flagstone with planted joints lets the edge dissolve into the beds and makes a small area feel less boxed in.
Planting doing the screening work
Instead of a taller fence, layered grasses, ferns and evergreen shrubs give privacy at seated height. Screening at seated height is cheaper, kinder to the light, and improves every year.
One quiet accent
A single terracotta vessel anchors the far corner and gives the eye somewhere to land. In a space this size, one strong object works better than several small ones.
Intended use
How the space is meant to be lived in
- Coffee for two before work, most days of the year
- A shaded reading spot in the middle of the afternoon
- A calm outlook from the kitchen window when nobody is sitting there
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