With a population of 8.6 million people in NYC, finding a space of comfort, screened from the views of others, can be hard to achieve. You want a little privacy! We get it! It is important to have the time to take a break, and to give your mind and body the space to relax, decompress, and reset.
Almost all of the NYC property owners that come to us looking to begin a rooftop, terrace, or even a townhouse garden, in one form or another, are concerned with the topic of privacy. There is one consistent design challenge that meets us on every job:
How can we design a space to feel personal, comfortable, and protected without making it feel closed off?
First, let me share some things that we caution against:
Many property owners think of privacy as something that requires a fence, a wall, or a hedge. And yes, these are three very distinct ways of achieving privacy, but while these elements can certainly play a role, effective privacy design is often much more nuanced. Just like how our body language can communicate, so can our design choices.
Let’s think about what aggressive barriers communicate in space:
Let’s say I have a terrace that comes out from my bedroom and I would love to utilize the outdoor space for morning coffee and evening reading. Unfortunately, I have an overly friendly neighbor whose kitchen window looks right onto my terrace. Installing a very tall trellis to grow vines over in order to block the window is one way to achieve privacy but it also, very aggressively, tells your neighbor that you are not interested in communicating with them and that you are not concerned with their feelings; one, their feeling to be friendly, and two, their desire to look out of their kitchen window.
Here’s how we would address this design challenge:
From a designer's mindset, curating privacy isn't only about what gets blocked, it’s also about using focal points to screen, conceal, and reveal what we want, when we want. One way that we might address this issue is to carefully position a plant in a large and beautifully finished planter on the terrace that would shield you from your neighbor. That way, your neighbor's eyes would be to focus directly on the movement happening on your terrace, but instead to focus on the appeal of this plant. For you, the tree creates a privacy nook where you can choose to come out and say hello, or stay hidden behind.
Choosing the right plant(s) is extremely important!
Perhaps it is a tree that goes in the planter. There are different design benefits to choosing a single stem evergreen or deciduous multistem tree. Additional advantages and disadvantages can be found in the density of the planting. How broad are the leaves? How tight or loose are the branches? How does this tree benefit me? Sometimes a tree isn’t a feasible option. In that case we would take a look at different shrubs. Maybe you would prefer a blueberry shrub as a screening mechanism on the terrace where you can also eat fresh fruits in the morning while you have your coffee. Or maybe you love the big beautiful flower clusters of a hydrangea! Perhaps you would rather incorporate tall, dense, meadow-like grasses. It's all about understanding your space, understanding the relationship between neighboring structures, and understanding your needs.
The best designs selectively preserve the views that should be seen and dispel what should not.
It’s all about specifically highlighting what you would like to see in your peripheral vision and obscuring everything else that you would rather not see. Although using plant material is our favorite option, there are many other functional features that we often install in gardens that work as screening devices as well. Outdoor kitchens, seating walls, storage structures, and sculptural pieces can all be implemented as visual buffers and focal redirectors within a designed landscape. Let’s face it, in a city of 8.6 million people, sometimes a visual buffer is the best illusion of privacy that you can get.
- Keren Dillard-Taylor
